


silkie

by indeedee (never_minde)



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Brother/Brother Incest, Dragons, Extremely Dubious Consent, Extremely Underage, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Forced Relationship, Kidnapping, M/M, Mating Bond, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Selkies, eat the damn dove, merfolk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 15:55:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22498657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/never_minde/pseuds/indeedee
Summary: The oldest story, the one that’s easiest for Hop to remember, it goes like this:A sealfolk maiden swims near a rocky shore to bask in the sun. She sheds her sealskin on the rocks near the beach where humans live. The sun is warm and the light is gentle, and she falls asleep. A man happens by the shore and sees her sleeping without her sealskin. Taking it, he hides it and comes back to the beach to find the seal maiden awake and frantically searching the shallows for her pelt.The human tells the frightened maiden that he has her sealskin. He says that he will destroy it if she does not come with him to be his wife.The sealfolk are all but gone now. There was only Hop and his older brother as long as he could remember. The sealfolk maiden’s story was once a precaution for their kind, but to Hop, it is mostly just a story.Except then it happens to him.And the man that stole Hop, from his brother and the sea…he’s not a human.
Relationships: Calme | Calem/Kasumi | Misty, Dande | Leon/Hop, Hop/Kibana | Raihan, implied Kasumi | Misty/Red, one-sided Kibana | Raihan/Yuuri | Gloria
Comments: 20
Kudos: 77





	1. the sealfolk lad

**Author's Note:**

> the last story i wrote was a nice story
> 
> this is not a nice story
> 
> this is your warning to go back while u have the chance

It was a story as old as their own kind.

Not that many of their kind were left. At the least, not in the sea that surrounded the Isle. For as long as Hop could remember it had only been himself and his brother that swam the waters in their skins. The sealfolk.

Leon mentioned times when there had been a few more of them swimming the waters. He never elaborated much, always content to pull Hop close and tell him he was all Leon ever needed. Sometimes Hop wished he would say more, though.

Hop knew that males alone couldn't have young, and he knew that he and his brother had to have come from _somewhere_ ; the two of them wouldn't exist without a mother and a father that had mated for them to be born.

Being mated had other purposes, of course. Leon had told Hop as much, gone over the explanations with endless patience when he deemed the younger old enough.

Hop would remind himself of these reasons, even now, as an adolescent, when he felt any anxiety at his brother's hands tracing reverently over the intricately carved scars on Hop's inner skin. The bright lines on his body that made up the pair of marks on his sternum and at the center of his back, placed in the same area on both sides of his exposed body beneath his sealskin.

Both sigils were etched deep into Hop's bare form. Scratches had drawn his blood time and again across the same lines, countless times over the years tracing into flesh the circular matching shapes and the pattern of swirls inside them. Over and over again, and the same for the one on Leon's own chest. To ensure the marks like brands would never fade.

Leon never talked about their parents, the mother and father that had bred them. Whatever sort of mates they might have been, Hop wasn’t sure he’d ever know.

It would have been in the time before, a time Hop couldn't remember because he hadn't been alive yet. Back when their kind was more, by least by a couple (maybe more?) folk than the two brothers now remaining of the sealfolk that roamed the waters in the Isle of Eternity.

That was a time when mating could have meant something different than it did with no remaining females of their kind. When Hop and Leon wouldn't have lived knowing they were destined to end their race as its only remainders. As the last.

Hop was curious about what other sealfolk there had been. What they might have been like, before they all were gone. Leon didn't like to mention specific people, even if he’d known any besides their parents. Not any friends or acquaintances he might have had. Perhaps the memories made him lonely or sad.

Leon told Hop stories instead.

* * *

The oldest story, the one that’s easiest to remember, is the same one that was told to Leon all his life and that he’s been telling Hop for all his life in turn.

It goes like this:

A sealfolk maiden swims near a rocky shore to bask in the sun. The body beneath her sealskin has a chill—that’s how it goes, but Leon’s explained, too, it goes beyond that, has roots in how their bodies work. The bare bodies inside their skins need warmth and light, sometimes, to be healthy enough to let them swim freely in their true forms beneath the sea.

In the story, the naïve maiden sheds her sealskin on the rocks near the beach where humans live on land. The sun is warm and the light is gentle, and she falls asleep beneath the rays. She pays no mind to the exposure of her body laid bare from the confines of her pelt.

While she sleeps, a human happens by the shore. He sees the maiden asleep without her skin. Taking it, he hides it—in some of the stories, he burns it, takes no mercy with his plans—and comes back to the beach to find the seal maiden awake and frantically searching the shore and the shallows.

The human tells the frightened maiden that he has her sealskin. He says that he will destroy it, if she does not agree to come with him to be his wife.

And that is the how humans or other deceptive folk have stolen away the people of Hop and Leon’s kind since their kind began, Leon always tells him gravely, tucking Hop close to him as they lie near sleep. To be their lovers or their servants, most often never seen again.

A sealfolk’s pelt is the maiden’s outer soul, Leon explains gravely, and it is the same for him and Hop. Their skins are the very things that makes make the sealfolk what they are. Without them, all that’s left is the body beneath. They can’t go back to the ocean,

It may be a story, but Hop knows it must not be, either. Hop knows it’s a thing that’s happened, probably more times than the ones that came before himself or Leon or their ancestors could count.

Being caught like that is a trap that isn’t possible to escape. The threat alone of losing those skins for good is enough to lure any of their kind like helpless lambs from the shore, from their kindred folk that are left to wait and mourn, from the sea itself. 

It’s a sad story, and it’s a true story, but for Hop, who listened to Leon always—who tried to listen and follow and imitate his brother—it was a tale of precaution from a protective brother, and only a story.

Leon would protect him always, that was the promise that came with the marks on their skin, the memories of being small and gasping, pressed down to the rocks jutting beneath the waves as the magic in the bloody circles bound them together forever.

Besides that, the fact he was already mated—Hop was no maiden a human man could take for a wife, but a lad. Anyway, he had only one reason to visit the shore.

Hop was always careful. He kept the story in mind, because it was the oldest one, the easiest to remember. Because he knew his pelt was more of him than the body beneath, even if it could be removed from his inner body like a hermit crab’s shell.

And because Leon had told the story to him more than any of the others.

The story of the seal maiden, or maybe countless of their kin, meant Hop had to take precautions when he went near enough to the shore to visit his human friend, Victor. It meant more than giving Leon excuses to swim alone; it also meant minding what his brother told him about the dangerous humans.

That Victor could be dangerous was a ridiculous notion. He was Hop’s truest friend, occupied a different place in his heart than Leon but still one that was important.

Hop had told the story of the seal maiden to Victor. Had told him many things. He’d told Victor that he mustn’t lose his pelt, no matter what. They were friends, and Hop was happy, as much as Leon would have rather him stayed at his side in the sea always.

Still, Hop had his own interests, and he was as cautious when he went to the shores of the Isle. The seal maiden’s fate was a story. A sad story, but no longer one with a face or a name that one could give to a member of their kind, a friend of a friend.

A story meant, perhaps, for the time when there had been more of their kind to lose. When it wasn’t just two brothers that were already bound together for no human to separate. Hop never thought losing one’s skin to man was more than a sad reminder of how the sealfolk had ceased to be where they lived. The story was a parable as much a precaution. Not truly, really a thing for Hop to fear.

Except then one day it happened to him.


	2. the stranger, the storm

The odds were stacked against Hop before he woke up that morning.

Leon woke first. A familiar hunger already had his body filled with heat, a hunger that lay well below his stomach. It had settled in low on his front side, nearer his dorsal fins where his genitals were waiting—pulsing with warmth and lust for the body curled, back-to-front, against his own. Hop was sound asleep.

Leon tightened his claws just enough to pull closer the warm body of his brother, his mate. He could easily take Hop in the water like this, be inside and taking his pleasure before Hop was fully awake to process what had happened, let alone put up a fuss. If Leon wanted.

But Leon didn’t care much for that. As hard as it was to get Hop roused and frisky this early however much Leon _wanted_ him, Leon still would much rather them both be on the ice above and without their skins if he could help it. It was the way he always liked to mate, how he always wanted to be with the one he loved, the last other living member of his own kind. The one remaining sealfolk of the Isle besides Leon himself, meant for him always to keep.

Leon liked the cold of the ice. The slickness of their bare bodies sliding against each other, compared to even the sweet press of warm fur in the water the way they had slept.

Most of all Leon loved to how expressive Hop’s face and voice were, without his sealskin.

And Leon loved the feeling of their mating marks pressed together on inside skin-to-skin, the twining magics reminding him that Hop was his, would always be at his side and was no one else’s.

Leon shuddered, knowing now he had to have him.

Gently, he used his claws to press Hop’s back to his front again, aligning their bodies to where the mark on Leon’s chest was at the familiar spot where he’d carved its identical match onto his brother’s back so many years ago.

He pulled Hop to him so the marks were tugged together. Separated only by their pelts.

Leon wouldn’t have been able to remove another selkie’s sealskin under other circumstances, were this not his mate. As it was, as soon as the marks were pressed to each other but for the layers of their sealskins, Leon felt the latter of both immediately loosen, his and Hop’s. Where they had seamlessly wrapped the whole of their bodies a moment before, now they were coming undone, revealing the flesh and outer dermis-covered sinew of his and Hop’s tan bodies underneath.

Leon peeled his sealskin off with ease. Then, he loosened Hop’s, far more slowly and unraveling him with care. He enjoyed revealing every inch of that flesh beneath Hop’s pelt, enjoyed the waiting that came before, the moments in between until his brother suddenly woke for air in a different body than the one he’d slept in.

The moment came just as Leon was peeling the last of his brother’s sealskin from his back—tucking it securely beneath the rock outcrop where they’d slept, he listened to Hop’s garbling in the water and watched for the thrashing of limbs not meant to push through the currents.

His poor brother. Confused, frantic. And Leon smiled in adoration and sympathy, even though this was exactly what he’d wanted.

“Come here,” he murmured, knowing Hop was yelling too loudly from his not-quite-oxygenated vocal chords to hear a word. They could both, unlike humans, breathe underwater far more favorably than other mammals in these bodies but not for long. Thrashing about and panicking the way Hop was, he’d already be near the edge of losing precious airflow to keep conscious.

Leon used a hand to grab his brother by the scruff of the neck with his talons, trying not to grip tight enough to break the skin yet needing to grip hold of enough of his flesh in one hand to pull Hop up with him. No easy task, considering Hop still was scrawny for his age—he only got longer and leaner, not bigger, Leon grumbled to himself, long-suffering, with an internal sigh.

Leon gracefully reached the surface and broke above, shaking out his long hair. He swam for the ice bed that had shaded them from the morning sun, Hop still in his grasp and flailing. With some effort, Leon hauled his brother over and onto the outcrop first, letting go of the boy’s neck at last. Then, Leon pulled himself up and over gracefully as well and approached Hop, after stretching out his inner body’s limbs.

“Good morning, Hop,” Leon whispered, pulling his brother close as Hop continued to hack and cough and spew seawater from his suddenly-filled lungs that had breathed it easily in his pelt and horribly without it.

“Llll—hhh—”

Leon didn’t try to kiss him, not yet. Better to give his mate time to properly get his air back, he thought reluctantly. He’d let Hop breathe.

At least until he got his strength back. If he decided he was going to be fussy about this—that way Hop could get, sometimes.

In the meanwhile, Leon would make better use of the time he had while Hop was still a bundle of nerves, so shivery and weak, panicky, disoriented from the shock of how he’d woken to the sensation of partly drowning…perfect and pliant, for lack of coherence or air.

All but inviting Leon to cover that lean, convulsing body with Leon’s own. Sidling alongside his brother-mate, Leon melted along the bony curves of Hop and pulled the boy back-to-front against him once more so Hop was stuck coughing while held flush against Leon’s chest.

Leon let out a sigh of contentment and then a groan of pleasure, which drew up into a whimper, feeling every bit of the pleasure as the two mating marks they had carved into each other’s inner skins so long ago touched each other completely bare.

“Hop,” Leon murmured to him, adoringly. Pressing kisses to his brother’s neck, wrapping muscular arms around the lithe frame to hold him in place while Hop shook for air. “So good for me…”

Hop gulped in a breath. He seemed to have realized what was going on, let Leon hold him without trying to kick or bite. He continued shaking and gasping every few moments, trying to stop at intervals, only to realize his body still wanted more air and reluctantly repeating the process.

“L-Lee…you didn’t have to, ah…”

“Mm.” Leon disagreed, pressing another kiss to Hop’s jaw. “You’d have said no. If I tried to get you up the normal way. Sleepyhead.”

Hop didn’t seem to have a response to that, though he’d have clearly _liked_ to. Unfortunately for him, that just meant the elder had clearly won the argument, Leon thought smugly to himself as he dipped a hand lower, and lost himself in the way Hop shivered and half-gasped with a cough at the contact when Leon started thumbing at his entrance.

Leon wanted the beautiful, shivering body in his arms so badly he thought fervently how good it was Hop was taking the unconventional wake-up call so well. Better than most days. Leon didn’t think he could have waited much longer for his mate to calm for him and be still and ready.

“Still open for me,” Leon teased, noting the oil from the fish they’d eaten the night before was still serving its secondary purpose, keeping Hop the requisite amount of slick enough to at least to take him. Leon might have teased more, but was distracted at the sight of his own fluids dripping free of Hop’s entrance the longer Leon pressed him open with his thumb, spreading. Instinctively Leon pushed Hop open just a little farther—more clearish-white fluid dribbled from him, diluted by the water from the sea but unmistakably Leon’s from the night before.

Leon shivered, knowing his proof of ownership—the tangible essence, and not the marks they wore—had sat inside Hop the whole night while he lay there next to him. The thought made Leon’s mind go blank with lust. Adoration, possessiveness,

 _His_ Hop. His mate. His brother.

They were last of their kind. It didn’t even feel wrong: knowing that they had clung to each other this way, that it was inevitable. Leon hadn’t waited, hadn’t seen the point, when he knew Hop would only be at risk more every day swimming in these waters without Leon’s mark on him for the other folk that swam the oceans to see. The merfolk wouldn’t have held back grabbing him to keep as a pet or the like with Nessa gone; even ordinary folkless animals would have killed Hop without a thought save for the sight of Leon’s ownership that woke their instincts to keep away.

Hop was too small. He would grow into himself, sooner than later, Leon hoped. But back then, it had only felt inevitable.

The sea and its life knew Leon, of Leon. If not unlucky enough to have met him personally, in or out of his true skin. Leon’s blood spelled _danger_ , brought on its own violent changes in the tide. Folk and beast alike could sense that much.

Hop’s blood was not the stuff of stormraising, not yet. But all the blood in him, and the body it belonged to, belonged to Leon in turn. Just like Leon was his.

Anyone that touched Leon’s mate had to answer to him. Anything inside his brother was his—but with that thought derailing his reminiscence Leon finally stopped trying to think at all, desperate to be within his brother’s body, as far as he could go as his own being without becoming pure water to sink into Hop’s very skin as he doubtless would have done given the chance.

Leon pushed, thumb giving way to something larger, what had waited since the moment he woke. He sighed out shakily and felt Hop writhing, gasping below him, rocking back onto Leon’s cock and crying out with every rough thrust that only made Leon press in harder, _harder_ on the ice beneath the morning sun…

* * *

If Leon had known Hop had plans to sneak away from him that afternoon, to brave the shores of the Isle—or had known this and known, by the same token, that Leon wouldn’t or couldn’t stop him _going_ —the elder boy might have been gentler on his brother.

Leon had no inkling that Hop was going to visit his human friend later. Leon had warned him off that enough times not to be concerned.

If Leon knew that this, this morning, would be the last time he’d be able to _hold_ his brother, for what could end up being the rest of their lives…he…

He might have simply let Hop sleep instead. Held him gently in the water. Both wrapped in their pelts, as their truest selves.

Whispered sweet nothings to Hop, his brother, his everything, for as long as he could. Brought any comfort possible that day, to the boy he loved more than the sea itself.

The thoughts did not occur to him until nearly moonrise: not that one, that evening, but the one that followed after.

Once despair had well and truly begun to set in.

* * *

By noonrise of that day, Hop’s prospects seemed to have improved. He’d successfully given his older brother his excuses and then given Leon the slip, starting for the shallows of the Isle of Eternity where he planned to meet Victor at the beach.

Granted, Hop was swimming slowly and carefully as he went, far more so than usual. Leon had mated him twice just that morning, and that _after_ getting Hop’s pelt off somehow beneath the water while he was still sleeping. Hop woke spluttering with an over-amount of water trying to pass his lungs and was barely aware of himself enough to participate for the first round that Leon pumped out.

Hop _hated_ it when Leon did that without asking. (The part that included forcing him to wake beneath the sea without his pelt on, not the mating itself, really—though he knew it was only so Leon didn’t have to listen to Hop try to worm his way out of the latter until later in the day, which was something Hop begrudgingly admitted he tended to do.)

But, as was the way with seals, folk or not, being smaller simply meant he had to deal with it. He understood that too. _Begrudgingly_.

Hop still felt a little shaky in his muscles even now, though that, he was pretty sure, was because he’d come at least twice during the whole ordeal. And he didn’t quite have that kind of stamina yet to do it reliably.

Overall, though; with the Isle of Eternity in sight and no merfolk nor Leon on Hop’s radar…

Things were by all appearances going far more comfortably in Hop’s favor than that morning.

Until very suddenly and very violently, they weren’t.

* * *

Hop wasn’t sure what happened. He knew he’d glanced up a moment, thinking he’d seen a flicker of something’s shadow passing overhead.

Next thing he knew, he was tumbling beneath crashing waves that been calm, clear seas not moments before. Barking in alarm, he rose up to the surface to the sight of a world gone stormy and dark.

In _seconds_.

Hop panicked. Instinctively he tried to get a feel of himself in his inner body, no small feat with his pelt still on. Was he bleeding? From earlier? No, he didn’t feel anything; and if it wasn’t bleeding from or through his pelt then it wouldn’t cause this.

Hop doubted even him bleeding right out could cause _this_.

The isle’s shore, composed of high, craggy rocks, gave him shelter to slip out of his pelt on the days that he came here to visit Victor, who usually brought a blanket or something to avoid seeing Hop without anything on even though their bodies (Hop was pretty sure) had the same kind of anatomy.

The shore was in sight.

Instinctively Hop swam toward it as quickly as he could with his foreflippers, body tunneling through the pounding water at top speed. He just had to tell Victor that something was wrong. He was going home, before Leon came to investigate the storm. His older brother would surely be suspicious at the slightest inkling Hop might be hurt—

And then Hop _was_ hurt.

Very hurt.

Because at the last moment, before he’d reached the lowest rock steppe—in a way that seemed far too unfortunate to be coincidence—an enormous gust of rising wind and a high-arced wave plowed Hop directly into the rock face to the right so that he smashed in a bloody heap against the jagged stones there, barking out a cry of terror and pain before plummeting again below the waves.

_Ow ow ow ow ow._

There were flashes of lightning by the time he managed to resurface, hurting and scraped to bits, and Hop was suddenly terrified because now he _was_ bleeding. Through his pelt and into the water, gushing in a clouded mass.

Yet, he still didn’t think he could possibly be causing this.

Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong, and Hop didn’t know what to do.

Should he forget trying to reach Victor, swim back for where Leon was? Hop saw the current was pulling so strongly toward the shore that he wasn’t sure he _could._ His heart ank.

He certainly could not manage it injured like he was.

Think. He needed to think, and Hop knew with anxious awareness he was losing a _lot_ of blood for his seal self.

The next time the waves rose, Hop made what he thought was the best decision for the moment: he clambered onto the nearest slab of horizontal rock, inching on his flippers and then paying on his side in a sleek-furred bleeding heap.

His injuries were worse than he thought.

Think. Think.

Think…

* * *

The pelt could heal itself in the water.

Hop knew that. But—Hop bit his lip.

Not if he was _wearing_ it, was the problem. In his current condition, he was too injured to do more than lose blood enough that seawater would do nothing for him except worsen the storm. The skin couldn't heal if the body of his seal-self was bleeding out through it.

He’d be fine without the pelt on, at least he thought so. He’d have to take his sealskin off, let it repair itself in the ocean spray. Then Hop would have dive back in, once the storm cleared, and swim back home again—and how long would _that_ take?

Another clap of thunder and a horrible lightning flash made the choice for him. Hop yipped, half-jumping out of his pelt as if in apology to whatever deity had caused the storm, thinking in his head, All right, all right! I’m going!

He peeled his sealskin off and spat out a mouthful of water the next time the waves crashed onto the rock a moment later.

What rotten luck.

* * *

It wasn’t exactly a mistake. Any more than it was exactly luck.

There was precious little else Hop could have done. Save for bleed out on the rocks—but even so, it was the last mistake the boy had the chance to make before his life as he had known it was taken.

Hop sat naked on the low rock outcrop, uninjured in his child's body, with his sealskin held torn-up as it was in his arms. He clung to it for warmth as the ocean rocked violently and sprayed him with water until he couldn't take it anymore had to clamber up a few more meters. Closer to the beach.

He didn’t want to, but Hop was exhausted. And getting a faceful of water in _this_ body every five seconds was extremely unpleasant.

The spray from the rainstorm that had come from nowhere, plus the spray of waves against the rocks, was still plenty enough that he could feel his sealskin healing itself already, slowly, but lulling and comforting in its progress.

Still. That was sorta a problem, too. Even without him wearing it, Hop knew the skin would sap his magic to recover—it _was_ him, it wasn’t a separate thing. The way humans like Victor wore fake skins, clothes.

Hop’s sealskin shared his energy.

Which was why he didn’t feel more alarmed, only stupid and ill-prepared and very much wanting his older brother, as his eyes began to drift closed. Still sitting on the flattened rock he’d made his way to, tired. So tired.

Just a moment to rest his eyes.

Just a moment to…

* * *

Hands. There were hands.

Roaming his body. Experimentally touching, rubbing at portions of skin here and there. Along his elbow, a leg, his penis, the soaking hair atop his head, the skin over the vein of his jugular.

Hands, just touching lightly and moving on. Nothing that suggested a pattern of any intent that was obvious, besides curiosity. Very…intense curiosity.

Hop realized he was no longer sitting up, but splayed out on his back. How had that happened?

He moaned, confused, his senses completely out of sorts. Blearily he opened his golden eyes to look for where he was…

He froze.

At the sight of a pair of bright, blue-green eyes, like shards of ice, which shone impossibly through the darkness of the sky directly over them. The pupils were like a cat’s eyes, hardly more than slits in that electric blue.

Hop realized then with soul-consuming horror that he wasn’t holding onto his pelt anymore. He didn’t know where his skin was.

Terror gripped him.

The face above him, handsome and dark-skinned even more so than Leon, gave Hop a confused look upon seeing the boy staring wide-eyed and horrorstruck up at him. Then, slowly, the stranger cracked into a wide, unsettling smile, one that Hop uncomfortably noted with a catch in his throat was edged with pointed fangs.

“Ho?” The man drew back, removing his hands from Hop’s body at last. He seemed very amused, which boded ill, Hop thought.

The man chuckled. “Seems the little selkie’s finally awake.”

Hop stiffened further all over his body, if that was even possible. His eyes were wide and his breaths came out in tiny, soundless gasps.

The stranger leaned in, seeming to drink in his fear.

“Yeah, I know what you are,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been waiting to get one of you alone for a while now. Though, I’ve got to admit, I didn’t think it’d be some kid.”

Hop stared up at him, trembling with dread. And not just for himself being identified as what he was, sealfolk.

This…this man, or whatever he acted like. He wasn’t human. Hop could _feel_ it. The stranger was folk. Hop just had no idea what kind.

All he knew was that the magic he sensed now was stronger than Hop had ever felt before, at such close range.

And that he ought to be scared for his life.

The stranger, sensing his fear, drew back and clucked his tongue down at the boy, even as he sat back on his hands with his figure draped over Hop oh-so-casually, like it was an accident. He kept one palm draped over flat on the rock at the other side of Hop’s torso, so his own long, human-seeming body partly caged Hop in where he lay.

“Don’t worry, your sealskin’s safe and sound…for now,” the man said lightly. But his eyes were bright and predatory. “I will have to ask you let _me_ worry about where it is, though.”

Hop's face screwed up. No. No.

The stranger smiled, one large canine jutting out like a snake fang. He leaned in close again, ignoring the way Hop tried to scoot back from him, terrorized.

“You’re not getting it back, little selkie.”

Hop wanted to sob. But he was too frightened to make a sound.

This couldn’t be happening; it _couldn’t_. Leon would come for him, Hop hoped frantically, hyperaware of the scars that etched the twin marks into his chest, his back. He promised.

Leon would—

Then: large, unfamiliar hands scooped Hop up like he weighed nothing at all, with no warning. The stranger stood and was hauling Hop up as well with him effortlessly, like a plastic bag, and Hop screamed. He kicked and shoved with his child limbs, trying to thrash free.

“No! No!” he shrieked, suddenly finding the power of movement and sound had been returned to him. “L-Let me—!”

“ _What_ was that? You want me to what?”

Hop stopped screeching for a moment, confused enough to be taken aback—long enough for the stranger to grin at him, sidelong. And continue on, in the vein of answering an unknown question that Hop hadn’t asked.

“Cut it in half? That pelt of yours?” The stranger hummed to himself thoughtfully as Hop stiffened in his hold, horrified.

“Sounds pretty gruesome, kid. But if you’re sure…”

Maybe it was a threat meant to keep Hop silent. Instead, the lad was still a moment longer before he screamed again, unthinking, and kept doing so: even as the stranger rolled his eyes, and began to walk again holding Hop as easily as though his increasing struggles were so bothersome as a gnat’s. He clearly could care less if anyone heard.

“Lee! Lee, _help me!_ ” Hop screamed, his head jerking toward the water to see it had gone calm again, like the storm earlier never happened at all were it not for the darkening of the sky.

The man walked fast, or maybe he was just that tall, but already the ocean was receding from view. And Hop struggled and kicked harder at the man holding to no avail, so scared he wanted to be sick.

“No, no, _**please!”**_ Hop wailed, ignored no matter how loudly he cried. “Put me down, don’t d-do this, noo…no…Lee! _Leee!!_ Lee, _please_ I need you, Lee— ** _LEE-EE…!!”_**

* * *

Hop's screams grew fainter as the man-that-wasn’t-a-man carried Hop easily in the direction of the island’s forested regions, further inland, completely out of sight of the rocky beach.

Victor could only listen. He didn't know what Hop knew, that the man that took his friend was folk, but Victor certainly could guess he was strong.

The human boy was hiding, terrorized, in a narrow rock cave facing the sea with a hand over his mouth to stifle his own sobs and gasps of fear. Listening to his friend being carried away by—by whoever it was, it hurt so much he couldn’t hold his sobs in any other way.

Victor had fled when the lightning got too close, intending to go back for Hop once he’d found somewhere big enough to drag him safely. But once the boy had found his hiding spot he heard new footsteps and he prayed, before he’d even realized anyone was approaching with a specific motive in mind, all from the sheer feeling of _wrongness_ at the storm and Hop refusing to wake up in the preceding minutes no matter how hard Victor shook at him and called his name.

The only comfort Victor had as he sat, cold and shivering in the rock alcove, with Hop’s screams of terror echoing in his ears, was the sealskin pelt he held clutched to himself in one trembling arm that wasn't occupied stifling his sobs.

 _Hop’s_ sealskin. The skin the stranger said he’d had. He’d lied.

Victor had only meant to keep it safe, and Hop too, until the storm blew over. He was going to go back for Hop but then the footsteps had by some miracle caught his ear and there wasn’t time.

Victor had chosen the pelt first because Hop always made it seem like it was the most important. Victor was afraid if he left it there with Hop already asleep and half-splayed out on the rocks, the wind or the waves would carry it away before he got back.

Now, it was Hop’s sealskin the stranger would be _looking_ for. He _had_ to be.

Victor couldn’t let him find it. But…But what could he do, then? What could he do?

Victor sat there, folded into the tiny wedge of space uncomfortably and crying in silence for the better part of the evening. Even until night fell. Still he sat, waiting and terrified. Certain that he’d be spotted by the same stranger that took his friend away, the second he climbed out with the pelt.

But neither the man nor Hop came back that Victor could hear throughout the night. Even as the moon climbed high. They were really gone.

And that…

Victor sobbed again.

That was almost _worse_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip hop


	3. silkie.

Raihan woke up and didn’t waste time opening his eyes, confused and incredulous to feel a warm body pressed uncomfortably close right up against his own.

Seriously. No, he wasn’t imagining it, Raihan saw when he focused his vision to see in the predawn shadows. The selkie pup had inched himself in his sleep so that his bare back was right up against Raihan’s front. It was almost cute, he thought, utterly bemused, wondering if it would’ve been better if Raihan had let the brat just sleep on the floor like a dog.

So, yeah—Raihan had _maybe_ just tossed the kid into his own bed next to him and mumbled some threats the night previous, before passing out. Could anyone blame him? Everyone had their limits, and Raihan had been ready to call it a night after dragging the crying brat the hour or so it took to reach Raihan’s home on foot in _human_ form.

Raihan’d had nothing to do anything as drastic as tie the kid up with at his decently modernized apartment of sorts, deep within the bowels of the island’s abandoned castle. And it hardly seemed worth the effort, when the kid had no reason to leave shy of a death wish to make a break for it. Raihan had made it clear to his new acquisition (as a bluff—but the seal lad clearly didn’t know that, and it was going to stay that way) that his sealskin was as good as mincemeat if the brat so much as twitched for the door while Raihan slept.

He’d figured it was the easiest way to make sure his hard-earned capture from the water didn’t run.

Well.

Raihan blinked the last of his sleep away, bewildered and also amused to find that apparently running had never been on the pup’s agenda. Not with the kid spooned on up against him, looking for all the world like he was right at home, sleeping naked in Raihan’s bed and cozied up against the other’s front without feeling so much as compelled to leave a centimeter of space between them.

Little weirdo, was Raihan’s first thought.

Then,

_Cute_. Raihan found the sentiment drawn to mind, unbidden. Experimentally he wrapped his arms lightly back up around the boy in front of him, so they weren’t hanging uncomfortably on his sides. But Raihan went further, let his fingertips skim over the bare skin of the naked selkie that was easiest to reach, along his skinny arms—minding his claws as he went. Raihan couldn’t have said what exactly he thought he was doing; honestly, didn’t care. He didn’t answer to anyone, even Rose, though he’d play along with the human’s plans if it meant getting to let the island’s Eternal Sleeper suffer enough to wake.

Maybe he wouldn’t turn this one over to that human, though, Raihan mused, more and more appeased by the tiny body he held the longer he touched. The boy’s skin in human form was utterly soft and smooth to the touch against the pads of Raihan’s fingers, especially for a mammal. The seal lad had probably spent more of his life than not, insulated from the wearing effects of the seawater spray by his pelt.

Raihan didn’t even _have_ the damn pelt, he chastised himself, suppressing a groan at the thought of having to comb the water beneath the waves for it—water wasn’t his strongest suit, not like the merfolk. In his haste yesterday he must’ve bid his airserpent call a storm that was more powerful than it needed to be. The pelt could be far back beyond the shore by now if the water had carried it away in a breaking wave; it was already gone by the time Raihan reached his quarry.

Without the pelt, there wasn’t a reason to hand over even a weak or useless selkie that couldn’t give him a good fight to that man Rose, Raihan mused, fingers stilling.

Maybe he’d just keep this one.

He smiled, letting his fangs snag on his lower lip as the seal boy stirred against him, apparently distressed when the touches stopped.

Well. Raihan had proposed to that goddesss of a human girl, Gloria, enough times to know he wasn’t getting anywhere fast winning _her_ heart. What a woman, Raihan thought dreamily, distracted, and his grip on the seal lad unconsciously tighened as he thought of the farmhand girl. She was as small as the seal lad, even had the same kind of scrawny, delicate figure, yet always knew exactly what to do to bring even the mighty Raihan to his knees in the most literal sense. She could see a spot of magic a mile away know how what’d kill it before it was close enough to say hello, Raihan had learned time and again, ever the masochist for a challenge.

As far as wives went, though…Raihan eyed the selkie as he began to stir, finally. The dragon stilled his touches and gave his prey an appraising second look.

This one, at least, he could probably break without effort—and then use him like the vanished pelt, to bring in more. Sealfolk were pack creatures; it had taken Raihan this long to get even one.

Raihan licked his lips. He’d longed for a chance to find the one that made the skies go violent in a way that matched Raihan’s own mastery of the elements, if only the water and air.

And if he won, he’d get that pelt and Rose might give him a few more of his buzzing, human modernities to play with. What a win-win.

He grinned.

And to think. He figured he’d pulled in a dud, when he came to shore and found this soft little creature instead of a powerful sealfolk that would batter his storms blow-for-blow.

Instead he got a hidden boon in this tiny boy, that only now going stiff in Raihan’s arms as he began to drift to consciousness.

About time, Raihan thought, amused.

He’d get his true sealfolk, his rival, in due time. But this one, he was going to be easy to bend to Raihan’s whims. So soft; smooth, delicate.

The scars on either side of him were nonplussing, but Raihan would know what they meant before the day was up. The seal lad would answer all Raihan’s questions about the sealfolk that swam these waters before the day was up. The dragon swore it.

Hell, he thought, letting his thoughts wander further, maybe the kid could cook. Or clean? Or, something. Raihan wasn’t interested in kids of his own, but if he had a perfect little servant on his hands with the threat of that imaginary pelt, why not take advantage?

If Gloria wouldn’t wed him, that was just as well—she’d kill him or he’d kill her in the end, Raihan was anxious for it.

But this boy, he’d probably be scared enough to play the part and just make the dragon’s life a little easier. Raihan wondered if he could get him to play the part of the good, little wife.

Thinking of this, and other things, Raihan chuckled, when the seal lad gasped and fully came to, obviously remembering the day before.

Raihan didn’t try to hold his grip on him. He and let the boy scramble to the other edge of the bed, staring at Raihan wide-eyed. His irises were a deep, gold color. Not bad at all.

Raihan, for his part, kept lounging on his side, watching the seal lad with half-hooded eyes, only partly paying attention once the boy went quiet. He was busy ruminating on his future plans: with Rose, with all of them.

“Hah!” he spared the boy a laugh, though; unable to hold back the edge of meanness in his voice. Raihan was the predator here, after all. “I thought you’d never get off me, there. Affectionate one, aren’t you? Little silkie.”

The nickname slipped out, unbidden, as Raihan cooed falsely to him. The boy’s eyes widened. ANd Raihan’s smile did in turn.

Raihan decided that he rather _liked_ the name.

It was perfect. Perfect, for Raihan’s terrified boy. This fluffy-headed, soft-skinned little sealfolk he’d stolen from the rocks.

The one that would soon enough bring Raihan the strongest sealfolk in the sea: for the mighty dragon to strike down and prove to the rest of the folk in the waters just who owned the air and water of this island once and for all.

And Raihan would make him _watch_. He’d make him watch one of his own kind murdered at Raihan’s hands, his last hope for escape, and then take the boy home.

Remind him as many times as it took to really crush into his bones, that Raihan owned him, always would so long as that pelt of his was gone.

So long as it stayed missing, that little body on the bed was all that was left of him now.

The boy whimpered. Raihan closed his eyes on his thoughts, pleased and opened them again, gaze sharpening on his prize.

No, Rose didn’t need this one. This one was Raihan’s.

His silkie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no one is nice in this story but poor victor


	4. the lost and the saved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no hop in this one except flashbacks, sorry :(( leehop
> 
> flashbacks are. extensive. both your sex stuff and cutting skin open to make a mark. dubcon etc

Leon had looked everywhere.

 _Everywhere_.

He didn’t sleep that night. Not once sunset arrived with him on pins and needles, waiting, and Hop still hadn’t returned to him.

He had to start looking for him instead, the older of the two brothers thought grimly, hoping it wouldn’t take as long as his sinking heart feared.

Leon started his search nearest the waters by the ice bed where he’d mated him that morning. Then he went inland, around the fish schools where Hop was supposed to be and where he’d already checked, then fanned out from there. Leon passed hours, combing every inch of the open water from the surface to the seabed for kilometers at a time.

_He couldn’t find Hop._

By sunrise Leon was scaling waters they hadn’t swum for years. Leon was calling out to his brother every few dozen meters in desperation. The noises that tore from his throat in his seal form were unfamiliar even to himself, vocalizations that Leon hadn’t known he could even make in his growing terror, heartbroken.

Morning came and went and any thoughts that this might be something innocent like Hop getting a bit lost or sleeping where he shouldn’t disappeared with it.

Leon began to feel really, truly scared. The thought, the very notion of losing Hop hurt worse than losing their grandfather, their grandmother, even their mum.

It hurt worse than losing Nessa. Worse than Sonia’s betrayal beforehand—the one Leon still couldn’t know whether to this day for certain or not had been intentional.

Not knowing where his mate was hurt more than anything in the ocean had hurt Leon before.

His brother was missing and scared at the least, and had to be hurt. And that was if he was still—still—Leon couldn’t make himself think the word. But it was true. There was simply no escaping the reality of it, with nearly a full day gone since he’d so much as lain eyes on Hop.

Leon didn’t know if there was even more than a corpse left waiting anymore for his mate to find.

He was greeted once again by the sight of empty ice sheets at the surface the next time he went above the water to scan the horizon. Something in him broke and Leon dived down again in despair, destroyed more every time at the sight of only nothingness surrounding him apart from the lapping waves.

Plummeting deep, Leon let out a grieved, barking howl beneath the water, and then another.

Leon spread his search into the more dangerous territories until he was swimming recklessly into places Hop would never go.

But he was desperate.

* * *

They hadn’t been separated this long for any time now Leon could remember. They hadn’t been separated more than half a day or so at most in years and years, not since the marks.

Leon’s gut twisted as he remembered just how young Hop had been. Missing him so much with every memory, every reminder, that it physically ached.

Hop was scarcely into what their mum would have called his bedlamer stage if she’d been around when Leon mated him. The young pup had still been so small and bouncy and eager to swim the seas they lived in at all distances now that he could swim at all, despite being so ignorant of all manner of dangers those tiny flippers couldn’t propel him fast enough to outspeed.

Even though they did a fine job, giving Leon the slip at the worst of times…

It was around that time that suddenly, Leon knew.

* * *

Hop was so young. Leon _knew_ Hop was too young. Hell, Leon probably was only just now not too young himself.

But he made his decision anyway, made it for the both of them. Because he'd heard his brother screaming and chased by wild sea animals too many times to leave him be without any protection at all.

Hop was his name; in a word, restless. He didn't _mean_ to be disobedient, just kept swimming off on his own in excitement because he was too young to understand. Slinking off in quiet waters instead of staying put, when Leon went to hunt for them the way Hop hadn’t been able to do and give his brother trouble before learning to swim.

Of course, never knowing, for all Leon tried to warn him, just what else waited in the water for anything as small and helpless as his little brother in his seal form. To be swimming by through the wrong waters at the wrong time, when something hungry or cruel or curious might catch a glimpse. 

And Leon realized he couldn’t stop him. He couldn’t make Hop grow into an adult that could protect himself any faster, and try as he might Leon couldn't watch him every second of every day.

But there was something else Leon could do.

It was cruel. Not what he intended, that may have been inevitable. Just that it was now, not later, when both of them were old enough.

But Leon loved him.

He couldn't lose his brother. Soon…to be far more.

Leon would do anything to keep him safe.

Leon would do anything to keep him, period.

* * *

He’d carried Hop up onto the ice. It wasn't an immediate thing. Rather, the culmination of long and patient weeks spent explaining, calming as best he could with the answers he had to match every nervous question. Partly to ease Hop's fears and ease him into the idea, what he had to do. Partly to quell Leon’s own anxious anticipation. 

Coaxing, Leon had the younger boy remove his pelt as Leon did his own. He let Hop lie down and eyed his sternum, testing his talons experimentally against the skin while Hop went tense.

It took a long time for the first mark. Leon carved the circle, the start of the mating mark that would make Hop his forever, onto that small, thin chest with utmost care, knowing it was too important to be anything less than perfect. It'd be what made Hop more than Leon’s brother, make him more than a helpless sealfolk alone in the water.

Cutting the shape into the flesh skin with his talons to Hop's distress, Leon soothed and hushed and kissed, and finally held Hop down to finish cutting into him once the pain was too intense for the boy to stand. Leon could never fault him for it, even as he didn’t stop, weight pressed over his younger brother while Hop squirmed and cried and tried so hard in vain to push Leon’s hurting hands away.

Leon hated hurting his brother. He hated Hop screaming at being cut open so that Leon could place the mark in his skin, spilling blood while Leon hushed him and held him down and kept cutting with his talons for what felt like horus until it was over, the sigil was done.

Then it was a slow, careful matter, guiding Hop’s shaking arm by the fingers to carve the same mark on Leon’s chest. The older sat stoic through the pain to help Hop, still weeping, in the effort it took carving his tiny claws into Leon himself in the right shapes. 

And then—

Leon wouldn't forget it. Not ever. His brother’s pained gasping, pain Leon felt himself because Hop was just too small and all but a vise around him.

Skin on magic on skin and sea and spray, feeling something and looking at Hop to see he felt it too when their chests were touched.

Noises that hurt Leon’s heart to hear, as much as it also felt so _right;_ taking him right there, on a slab of rock nearby but away from the bloody ice, jutting at a flat angle from beneath the surface.

All while the sky began to darken with their new marks pressed together and bloodied, dripping into the ocean, pressed flush chest to chest. 

Storms. Howling wind, Hop crying, Leon pressing, holding, being held back, vowing to spend a lifetime making it up to him.

And then, when it was over, Leon had petted Hop’s hair and kissed him and told him how good he’d been.

And then laid Hop out on his front, his back exposed so that Leon could start carving the second mark, knowing he'd probably want him in his arms both ways if this bond was forever.

Forever. Leon repeated it to him, crying himself by that point, but he didn’t stop cutting the skin, he just couldn’t afford to lose him. Hop was the last one he had. Hop was all that was left to protect.

 _I promise, I promise, forever,_ Leon had said over and over to his new mate on the ice. I’ll be yours. _You’ll be mine. I’ll always be there, always. Just come here. You’re okay._

And Hop had clung to him after Leon finished in him a second time, the latter’s turn to be utterly exhausted and gasping from the effort. He held his brother close and swore to himself he wouldn’t let the ocean or that island or even the One That Sleeps Below take his brother away from Leon, now, not with this bond so that Leon could keep him always until it came time for the last remaining sealfolk to be gone from the sea.

They’d go together, because Leon knew it wasn’t likely he’d live without the other half of his new mark even then with it still stinging in the salt fresh on his skin. And the same went for Hop.

They were the remainders, the only. But at least they didn’t have to be alone.

Not ever again, Leon promised, and from then on he always slept with Hop curled so close in his arms that it couldn't be right to live in an ocean without him.

* * *

…And now Hop was gone from him.

And Leon didn’t know why.

 _He couldn’t find him._ Leon couldn’t find him.

And the terror that filled him, thinking what might have happened to his brother, was all-consuming.

The sun was high over the horizon the next day and sinking. Leon was out of his mind with grief, because he still hadn’t found Hop. Leon’s body ached from swimming so long as quickly as his body could be pushed. His chest ached and he imagined it was from the mark carved into him that was aware of its missing other halves.

The place where Hop should be pressed against him. Empty. Where Hop should be safe, in Leon’s arms. Gone.

Leon couldn’t last like this. He could hardly think for grief.

It was hardly surprise even to himself that his last, most desperate bid was the most foolish, nearly suicide. But at that point Leon would have done anything.

He swam to the middling waters off the southeastern corner of the island, where the merfolk made their home. 

Their kind had made their home to resemble a makeshift town. Leon hated them, or had for a long time now, at least. Even their dwelling was too sedentary and _far_ too close to the visage of an underwater version of what villages existed of the kind humans lived in for Leon’s comfort.

But there was no comfort for Leon to be had. Not now.

He plummeted through the depths and shed his skin at the gates, slinging it over his shoulder as the closest swimming merfolk stopped in the water to stare at the stranger at their village.

Some went wide-eyed, grabbed the ones near enough to themselves to tug them along. Swam for cover as fast as they could.

Leon would let them live, maybe. If he could get the others to talk first.

But only if. 

He stormed into their city’s limits proper, as if he didn’t know his kind were all but banished there except as trophies, animals, or would have been if any others remained alive. 

Leon didn’t care how he hurt that image, now. His human-shape body stalked more than swam the pebbled paths through the limestone gates, and he screamed for Hop.

Please.

Come out.

Where are you.

I'm here.

Finally, the merfolk acted when they realized either who he was. Or at least that he was clearly out of his mind.

Leon had been waiting for that.

The mermaids and mermen that could fight shouted the alarm. Some raised their weapons to charge him on sight. The ones that couldn’t fight that Leon’s had already seen screamed louder, fled with the males and larger females, who tugged their young and their petite among them them to safety into beds of thick anemones or piled reeds if they didn’t just make a break for the seabed below where they'd lined their shell-strewn huts.

Leon wasn’t aware of himself anymore, was not cognizant of fighting any of the merfolk individually with his bare hands, only his rage. He didn’t remember whether he killed any.

Not after the first brave mermaid had gotten close enough to Leon. Herself not much larger than Hop’s size, but wiry in build. Something about her was familiar in a way that made his mind snap.

The mermaid girl had shot through the water up at him with a loyal school of silverfish at her side, and Leon—

He acted, remembered what he did only long seconds after it happened. Seeing the brave stupid finwoman approach in a bubbling flurry only for Leon to reach out and seize her by the throat, talons wrapping around for how skinny she was.

Leon had her and was squeezing tight with bared teeth before she could so much as slash down at him with the sharpened sea glass in her hand. sSe had to let it fall harmlessly into the water and gasp, with her webbed hands clawing to get his own loose. His talons were stronger than the points of hers.

Leon was mindless, snarling at her, telling her to tell him where his brother was. Where she and the other awful tailfins had taken him.

Because Leon had looked, he’d circled the island kilometers out in every direction and Hop was _nowhere else._ They had to have him, they must.

All the while the mermaid only choked around his fingers that were crushing around her throat and his large fingers blocking her gills. She clawed his hands bloody with her own but Leon didn’t let go. He was beyond physical pain stopping him from getting Hop or else getting even, getting _something_.

Shapes darted in his periphery, green and scaly. He gritted his teeth further and swung the mermaid violently in his grip even as he fended off the three males that hadn’t frozen from attacking for fear of her safety. Leon clawed the ugly mermen with his talons, seeing red as their blood spilled where he caught their full-bodied scales even as he started to run out of air.

Red anger made a sheen behind his eyes. Red, clouding the sea with his own blood from their weapons and claws. Hooks and spears thrown from a distance if halfheartedly and the mermaid child still clawing at his hands with her sharpened little claws.

And Leon didn’t, he didn’t care. Only screamed at all of them, _Where is he, give him back_.

The fight wasn’t what had most of the mermaids in the small town of sorts fleeing anymore to the shelter of their homes, soldiers and fighters aside. The blood pooling from shallow wounds in Leon’s flesh already was enough to make the waters above the colony grow dark.

The clear color of the water was changing like a sunset to reflect what lay above. The colony’s spot in the sea going dark all around beneath the blackened sky.

Thunder rumbled above.

If he died for his brother, all of them would. Leon's blood would have his revenge even if he drowned…

…

The next thing Leon remembered was being smacked hard round the head with a finned tail. The last thing he saw before he gasped and blacked out, was a flash of red that _wasn’t_ blood—too dull and light-colored to be more of what clouded the water black, but a lighter orangish swirl of a maiden’s floating hair. She swung her finned tail again with the force of a sea lion hitting the ice.

Or maybe a group of six.

This was certainly going hurt when he woke up…if he woke up…no. He couldn't die!

He had to…he had to find…

“ _Hop_ …” Leon finally muttered out before the water filled his lungs beyond capacity and he succumbed in his human body ,to the drag of the water pulling him down to darkness.

* * *

“Argh!” Misty yelled, annoyed. Her finned tail continued whipping back and forth furiously in agitation as she watched the sealfolk man keel over like a dead fish. “What a pest! Just what does that animal think he doing here, huh? We don’t have his brother, and he didn’t even put up a good fight!”

“Nice kill, Misty,” a familiar young woman's voice said. Amy approached from her position at the nearby cannons, waiting earlier in preparation to fire upon seeing the sealfolk man. Only for the legend of his kind to fall in one blow and another to a hard tailfin smack to the head.

Amy looked impressed, bending down to look at Leon. “Didn’t even need a weapon…he’s still drowning, but he’ll be gone in a few minutes." The blue haired woman straightened and shrugged, fin flipping uncertainly as she considered. "I guess if his kid brother’s missing, then…Leon was the last one we’ll have to worry about.”

The young woman glanced at the sky. Above, the weather still rumbled with heavy rain, winds whipping about in a frenzy.

Downed sealfolk being a good thing or not, it didn’t sit well for their village to have the seas so angry.

The mermaid Leon had been holding in a vise earlier was doing little more than float in the water, gasping for air. Hearing Amy’s words, the brown-haired child looked up, startled.

“L-Leon?” Lynn managed to get out, voice hoarse. “That Leon? He was…He was Nessa’s…”

Misty, who was looking up at the sky herself, quickly turned on the smaller mermaid with an authoritative air. She had to fight not to let her expression go soft, at the child's obvious anguish even for a man that nearly murdered her.

“Lynn, you okay? It’ll heal?” Misty asked to snap her out of it, peering at the girl’s neck.

The small mermaid nodded meekly, and Misty asked no further, seeming satisfied.

“Good," Misty said. She was thinking about something, trying to make up her mind.

"Amy, help me get his sealskin back on him,” Misty declared finally, with her hands on her hips. The other mermaids gave her looks of shock.

Misty noticed this, and turned up her nose at them, folding her arms.

“It’s a shame not to celebrate a good victory, you know. But I don’t think the oceans will appreciate it if he _bleeds out_ on us.”

Lynn gasped, belatedly glancing up as the others had to the sky above, then the currents churning hard around them even far beneath the depths.

Amy nodded quickly, understanding quickly into place.

“Right, the blue-haired said, swimming low with her tail curled in a semblance of kneeling. She pulled the pelt from Leon’s shoulders, starting to shift the fur where it fit to his head and torso.

“Then we throw him out. I _hate_ pests,” Misty grumbled, starting to lower herself in the water as well to help.

A hand on her arm stopped her.

“I’ll do it,” Lynn said softly, voice still hoarse but eyes wide and a little sad. “He…I-I’d…”

“I understand,” Misty sighed, her tail flicking again a bit as she backed off.

Truthfully she was glad to be rid of the task, selfish as it was to take advantage of the child's guilt. The one called Nessa had saved Lynn and two other mermaids the same age years back from orcas a long time ago, an incident Misty knew of, though she hadn’t been there to see it.

When Ina had been in charge of the colony, that act had been enough that their kind were instructed to leave the sealfolk alone. Particularly when they were already on the brink of extinction near the isle as it was, partly thanks to the mermaid’s own kind hunting them for sport.

Misty cared little for debts, would have let Leon die under other circumstances. But she remembered something she'd seen at the shore not many moons back, and had an inkling where that boy he’d been screaming about might be.

A plan began to form that made her smile at the thought, of getting to see her own little human lover on the shore.

As if things couldn't get more convenient, she spotted a figure of another familiar maid not far off.

“Hi! Lana!”

The small mermaid that had been hovering behind the scene, unaware the others knew she was there, startled and swam forward. Lana bowed to her queen, or started to, but Misty waved her off.

“No worries, sweetie. Can you grab something for me? I just need the _red hat_ from my home, above the dojo. It should be hung up near the mirror.”

Lana blinked, bewildered. What did the queen need a hat for, at a time like this?

Still, she rapidly nodded. “Yes, of course,” the girl said, swimming off quickly to do as instructed.

The currents around them began to grow rougher even as they pulled Leon’s pelt safely over him, to make his bleeding cease.

“Good,” Misty told the two girls, satisfied. “He's breathing, right? Now go drag him off somewhere and throw him out. I don’t care where, just make sure it’s far from the village.”

She considered, then added, “And the shore too.”

Lynn blinked up at her, with her large, brown guileless eyes.

“The shore?”

Misty giggled. So naive.

“You’ll understand someday, sweetie," she said, wagging a finger at the bewildered girl, hardly minding how Lynn's throat was bruising fast.

“Now, make sure that pest is a nice little seal again, and once that’s done go dump him at the bottom of a ravine somewhere,” Misty went, snooty again and suddenly once more businesslike. “See if he gets some jellyfish stings for bothering us—oh. Lana!”

The girl was swimming back already, a red-and-white hat in one hand. Goodness, the girl was speedy.

“Here, Misty.”

“That was fast,” Misty said approvingly. She took the baseball cap and stared down at it fondly in her hands.

Then she looked back up to her subjects, albeit in the loosest since—as far as queens went (particularly _mermaid_ queens), Misty was mostly a tomboy. She didn’t like being tied down to business in the colony, and she had some business of her own to attend to on the island.

She wasn’t the sort to make plans or try to spin the situation to her own advantage, merely curious. And Leon’s little fit at her home had piqued her interest considering the only other sealfolk she knew matched his features enough to be the brother he was looking for, who apparently proved Misty wasn't the only one that liked to frolic in her human shape with the ones on land. 

“I’ll be back. Take your orders from Kris until then,” Misty declared, with a cheeky wave at the girls gathered. She tucked the red hat under one arm securely and began to rise.

Amy, at least, looked like she wanted to argue. “In this storm?” she said, incredulous. “Are you sure?”

“No storm is a match for Misty,” the redhead declared confidently.

Orienting herself with some difficulty in the dark, Misty turned so she could see the distant islands. Worst came to worst, Misty figured, she could probably get Raihan to help her out with calming the waters should she be in danger.

Even if he made some annoying demands again without bothering to think about how those sorts of things _worked_ for their kind, really all the folk. He was a pain.

But if Misty could get past the unpleasant weather and the arrogant dragon…she’d get to see her land boy again, she thought dreamily.

She didn’t let the other mermaids see her romantic sigh.

Thusly decided, the mermaid queen shot up in the water with her tailfin undulating at rapid speed.

“See ya!” Misty called down to trio of maids, and sped through the sea with her precious hat in tow: swimming in a graceful red-and-green blur toward the Island of Eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more hop soon. it won't be nice probably
> 
> on a lighter note, probably some characters ya weren't expecting here? they're allllll canon from some game or another. non-anime though. even the tcg club masters are fair game when u need npcs
> 
> those mermaids nessa saved (lynn, heather, & julia) are the 3 gym trainers u battle at hulbury 'water temple vibes, fuck this' stadium fyi bc i love their design


	5. what was (not) missing

Raihan had not expected the little selkie to give him any kind of challenge or grief whatsoever.

In the most literal sense, the boy hadn’t. Not intentionally, at least; clearly. That much was obvious.

The pup nodded yes or no when Raihan questioned him. He moved and didn’t resist when Raihan moved him.

He followed when Raihan yelled for him to do so. He ate, if clearly not hungry in his misery, if food was placed in front of him, so long as it was fish or meat. Which Raihan could at least appreciate—the dragon wasn’t fond of plants or roots himself, though it was rare he actually needed to eat at all.

But for all his hysterics and screaming yesterday, or maybe rather because of it, the little seal brat wouldn’t speak. Questioning him for answers besides ‘yes’ and ‘no’ was useless for the time being.

All he did was stare at Raihan and cry, left to his own devices.

The dragon wondered if he may have been better off just leaving him in his bed all day and doing something else. At least then he’d have been able to tell if the pup had enough wits or courage in him to attempt an escape while his master wasn’t looking.

It didn’t seem likely, though. The pup was so helpless and lost that Raihan had to wonder, honestly, about the sealfolk themselves that had whelped him, or at least whoever this Lee or Li was the child had screamed for when dragged from the beach.

Whoever they were, they obviously weren’t very good at the job of rearing smaller ones. It didn’t seem Raihan’s little silkie was capable of more than being utterly dependent and useless, left on his own.

Like something was missing. Something other folk didn’t lack so badly; that let _normal_ creatures with half a mind make decisions or do anything, besides stare him and cry.

* * *

Raihan had finally, barely dragged the pup’s name out of him that morning.

He’d asked; once, and only once. Then—not getting an immediate response—Raihan’d followed _that_ up with about five minutes’ worth of screaming into what felt like a mindless void. Try as he might, the tiny thing just stared at him and shook motionless on the bed where Raihan’d left him, seeming incapable of doing more than tremble and cover his head. Raihan had shouted his brains out for what ought to be a simple answer and still, the wide-eyed boy merely shook all over and cried and keened without noise and curled up in on himself, like that’d protect him, until Raihan finally had gotten so annoyed and bored that he’d walked away.

…

“H… _Hop.”_

The response had finally come long after Raihan had given up shouting, had gone to the doorway of the next room over and considered what to do with the day, how he could keep the selkie restrained while Raihan searched for the pelt. The thought alone was irksome and Raihan had moved on to contemplating how to best hurt the child without killing him, to show him that his new master meant business, when he heard the word drawn out in a quiet whisper from the bed traveling oh so slowly to him. Another person’s ears might have missed it altogether, lacking Raihan’s heightened senses.

Raihan had been startled at how hoarse and awful the boy’s quiet voice sounded. He’d turned around, not sure he was hearing properly, and walked back over to the bed. He wasn’t displeased to see the little shaking bundle of skin that was his silkie finally looking up at him again. The seal lad’s gold eyes were wet and leaking from where he still lay, soundlessly asking for _something_ Raihan hadn’t understood.

Even accounting for fear, the boy had sounded off. The lad kept swallowing, too; Raihan could see the movements in his throat as understanding hit.

Okay. That changed things a bit. He’d lost his voice.

And now it hurt the stupid pup to even talk.

Well, that was what the brat got for screaming his throat raw yesterday, Raihan had supposed with a snort of laughter through his nose that blew tendrils of smoke. Seeing this, the child on the bed gasped and quaked, just shy of hyperventilating.

Seemed Raihan had gotten more worked up than he thought.

“Huh,” he’d said, staring down unimpressed at the pup just to check the little one was listening. Those rapt gold eyes snapped to him and didn’t leave his own, which seemed to indicate he was, in fact listening; so Raihan pressed on: “All right, then, little silkie…you said, what. Hop?”

The seal lad had shivered and nodded back with a movement so slight it was barely there.

_Hop_. Raihan turned over the name in his head, looking at his captured prey staring at him teary eyed and pitiful.

Well, it wasn’t like Raihan had to call the sealfolk lad by his given name. But now Raihan had it, if he wanted it.

It probably was even his _real_ name. Nothing in the pup’s behavior indicated he was smart enough to lie about that, or that even ought to know why it was important. Raihan shivered at the thought, of how much power that knowledge alone gave him compounded with the fact that the seal lad believed Raihan held his pelt.

That had made the dragon smile. Apparently not kindly: on the bed he watched his little silkie’s shaking grow worse, but _Hop_ didn’t try to resist or back away when Raihan reached out for him.

Raihan had pulled the child by one arm and dragged him out of the bed, laughing again when ‘Hop’ couldn’t even land properly on his feet and so ended up half-kneeling with a hard sound of his body hitting the floor, only held up where Raihan had his forearm gripped in his talons.

All the noise that came from the seal lad for the whole of this was a tiny, gargling whimper, and then a slight gasp when the bed had vanished out from under him and he landed hard on the stone floor. He didn’t take his eyes off Raihan once the whole time as he was dragged to face him, which the latter appreciated.

“Hop, then,” Raihan had said, pleased. He’d liked the trembling he could feel in his hands, how it shook the pup’s entire body for its smallness.

“All right, then, silkie,” Raihan had said, smiling at him with a leer. “Now that I know your name, I suppose I can spare you mine as well.

“ _I_ am the great Raihan, mighty dragon of the elements.” He’d laughed, then, at the child’s entire body stiffening in terror accompanied by a piteous whine. “You should be so honored, that such a fearsome and powerful being and no less, is the one that _owns you_ now.” 

The boy had let out a hoarse keen of fear while Raihan laughed again, liking him more for how properly cowed he was.

Raihan finally had pulled the pup to his feet and patted his head condescendingly in a show of benevolence, appreciative too that the selkie didn’t try anything as stupid as pull away.

He’d nearly missed in his sadistic rush, the way the boy had closed his eyes and pushed lightly, desperately into the touch on his hair, brief as it was. The pup made no sound but there were still were rivulets of tears streaming down his face.

Raihan’d had to resist the strangest urge then to lean in and lap them away.

If only to watch the way his silkie squirmed.

* * *

Looking back, Raihan thought sourly, he rather wished he had.

It would have been far more interesting than anything his new captive did in all the day that followed.

_All he did_ was what Raihan told him to do.

Which was…fine. Or ought to have been. If the lad weren’t too simple-minded to comprehend most of what Raihan _asked_ of him.

Hop didn’t know what anything in Raihan’s home was. He didn’t know how to open an icebox, how to twist the knobs on a sink—Raihan had nearly killed him on the spot when he realized the brat wasn’t _toilet trained_ , but at least he seemed to comprehend the instructions on how to use the bathroom in Raihan’s dwelling without requiring an actual demonstration on (quite possibly) pain of death.

By sunset the pup was already dead on his feet, like being led around or occasionally dragged or carried to be shown things by itself was utterly exhausting.

Even for a tiny thing he’d stolen from the rocks beside the water, and one that doubtless missed whatever dumb animals and packmates had whelped him…the seal pup, Hop. Raihan got the sense the child just didn’t seem quite _right_.

Like not all of what should have been there, really was.

Raihan couldn’t help but think so when he landed his eyes on him and saw the absolute lack of…anything autonomous, any trace of thought, only fear and waiting and raw pain that lay hopeless and ever-present behind the pup’s gold-eyed tears.

The kid was _missing_ something, clearly. Whatever that thing could be was as good as killing him for the way he acted, melodramatic little brat or not, Raihan thought. Snorting as the conclusion crossed his mind.

Raihan could only guess it was his pelt.

Well, Raihan could say for certain: Hop wasn't getting _that_ back.

Raihan wondered, if this weird and weak docility would last forever in the seal lad in Raihan's home without it.

And if that wasn't a positive thing or…or not.

* * *

Raihan was left stewing in these uncertain thoughts and not liking how he couldn’t quite decide.

If this…utter _incompleteness_ he sensed every damn time he looked at the tired, distraught pup that followed Raihan’s directions (if only when he understood them, which was hardly ever) was ultimately for the better, in Raihan's favor.

The thing was, Raihan knew how to break things. He knew how to destroy. He was a dragon, after all: he was born for it.

He didn’t know what to do when presented with something that so clearly was already _broken_.

“If you’re going to be useless, you may as well just stay in bed. At least you can keep it warm for me,” Raihan finally snapped, seeing the way the seal lad wobbled on his skinny, shaking legs the next time Raihan walked by to observe with some annoyance how his silkie was still standing exactly where he’d left him.

The seal pup—Hop—looked up at Raihan wide-eyed. The boy’s tears had finally stopped, but Raihan was pretty sure that was only because he hadn’t given him more water to drink when he’d hardly earned it.

“You heard me,” Raihan said, irritated at the way the pup seemed to be asking him for something every time he stared, even if it wasn’t any request so stupid as the pelt that Raihan didn’t even have. “Go on. Bed.”

The boy bit his lip, tremulously. He looked around at the small dwelling, the tables and floor and furniture. Then he looked at Raihan, the absolute picture of uncertainty. With some hesitance Hop stared at him and sat down on the floor. He stared still up at Raihan without breaking eye contact, fear and questioning in those gold eyes as if to ask, Well, is this right?

For heaven’s _sake_.

Raihan magnanimously resisted the urge to yell. Instead he reached forward, hoisting the sitting boy up off the floor and then tucking him under one arm. Little Hop tensed only a moment before going slack in his hold, unresisting and not trying to pull away while Raihan maneuvered him.

Raihan absently skimmed the soft skin of his back in a smoothing motion in appreciation, eyebrows raised that the boy curled up into his side, even as he started walking back toward his own room with his captive in tow.

He'd wait until the brat could talk again, give him another night. See how well he'd answer Raihan's questions, many and growing the longer his captive remained.

Until then, Raihan thought, settling into his bed and unfolding the pup from under his arm to lie down beside him—exhausted gold eyes already drifting closed…

Yeah. He could, probably, work with this…whatever this was, Raihan mused. As he looked his little silkie over yet again.

His pretty silkie. He wanted to coo at him, but didn't relish the thought of more crying if he did.

Humming instead to himself, curious, the dragon unthinkingly reached out. Skimmed the pads of his fingers over the curve of Hop's side, where he lay uncurled on the bed next to Raihan as he'd placed him. The dragon ran a falsely five-fingered hand down the length of naked skin, starting from Hop's shoulder and smoothing his way all the way down to his hip.

Raihan let his hand finally settle there, possessively, rubbing circles with his thumb and careful to mind his own talons. Noted with interest the way his silkie shivered at the touch, half-whimpered; yet didn't let it stop him from drifting off and into sleep beneath Raihan's hand.

So pitiful. And even more, so soft.

Raihan watched him, and continued doing so as those golden eyes fell closed and his breaths went even.

Well. Broken or not, Raihan decided, electric eyes wandering with intent across the sleeping body on the bed.

Yeah. He could work with this.

Something so frail and utterly helpless in his grasp, _forever…_ the idea made Raihan swell inside with a poisonous, and familiar, feral pride. Should _all_ creatures only be so cowed like this one, in the mighty dragon's presence.

Whatever Hop was missing; it'd be Raihan, now. His old existence gone in ashes.

It was no coincidence the dragon made his home within the Vault, the deepest part of this dilapidated castle. Where no one could enter or leave without Raihan's say.

It was no wrong rumor of legend how dragons loved to hoard their treasures from the world, he thought.

Yes. This little one was stupid, but it'd learn.

It'd learn its place. Right here, Raihan thought, letting a contented and unkind smile slide over his face.

His silkie. His Hop.

Right here, in the palm of Raihan's hand.


	6. what was missing

Hop was scared. He was scared, he wanted his brother.

He felt sick and he was tired; so, so tired. But he couldn’t sleep. Not now. He wasn’t allowed.

The stranger…no, worse. The dragon (and Hop wanted to shake and wail every time he remembered, this wasn’t even another breed of folk that had him so far out from the shore, worse than the fairies or a human. the man was a _dragon_ ), was staring at him in a way that made Hop want to hide.

But Hop couldn’t seem to pull his eyes away or break eye contact himself, not even to look around at where he was. He struggled not to let his eyes well up with tears, not wanting to make his coughing and shaking worse. Not wanting to make the elemental creature angry.

“Go on. You can look,” the dragon—Raihan—coaxed, tilting Hop’s chin away from where Hop was staring directly up at him, sitting as Raihan had placed him so Hop was straddling his lap.

With no choice left, Hop reluctantly took his eyes off the dragon in a man’s form and looked around, his first glimpse of the outside of the dark, stone labyrinth and the dwelling that lay within since being brought here.

It was…like a forest, almost. The huge stone structure (a castle, Raihan had called it, though it didn’t match the palaces of the bygone mermaid kings and queens for form and structure that Hop remembered) was covered with ivy and vines, and hidden in a grove of trees. The area was almost completely overgrown and had the mist of wood magic in the air, save for the cleared path of shattered trees and stomped vegetation that Raihan used to enter and exit the heavy wooden doors that led within connecting the world outside.

Hop had no idea why the stranger was showing him this. He doubted he’d remember the way, even if he wanted to escape. And he didn’t have his skin, so there was no point trying. Raihan would destroy it if he tried to leave, Hop thought, trembling intensifying as he stared glassy-eyed at the trees and foliage that covered thickly the nearby forest floor from the stone they’d sat upon.

Hop could only pray that Leon would come. That Leon wouldn’t die without him, the way Hop could feel himself slowly feeling his life sap away without _him_ —

No. That was ridiculous. Leon was strong, Hop thought desperately, unconsciously curling into Raihan’s chest to ease his shivering.

Leon couldn’t die.

Leon…Leon just had no idea how to find him here. And Hop didn’t have a way to call him. He was trapped, and Raihan knew that.

And Hop was scared. He didn’t want to make the dragon angry.

He’d rather die himself than do something that made Raihan angry enough to hurt Hop’s pelt.

* * *

Answering Raihan’s questions was simple enough—or it would have been, now that Hop could mostly talk again without it hurting. The dragon-not-a-man had helped, pouring water down Hop’s throat through a strange, hollow glass cylinder throughout the night to help his sore throat.

But most of Raihan’s questions were very confusing, even when he was being patient. And Hop didn’t want to risk getting the answers wrong.

Hop felt a hand skimming down his lower back in a soothing gesture and unconsciously relaxed, curling in closer to the man holding him. Hop’s stare was unfocused, a blank gaze out at the trees. He stifled a cough. He wondered if the bright green shapes he saw out there, waiting, were real, or his tiredness letting his mind play tricks on him.

“All right, then, silkie,” Raihan said, and Hop dragged himself out of his wondering with a now-familiar dread, pulling himself up a bit to meet the tall man’s eyes with his own tired, glassy ones.

It wasn’t easy. Even looking mostly human Raihan seemed to stretch lengthwise forever, on or off two legs just meeting his eyes could be a strain on Hop’s neck.

“It’s storming,” Raihan said, pointing up at the sky.

Hop glanced up, giving as much of a nod as he could, and bit his lip.

He hoped Leon wasn’t hurt too badly. Hop didn’t know if it’d stormed yesterday, too, sequestered as they were beneath the Vault. The thought of the sky and the sea weeping for two days, hard enough to reach this far inland, made him tremble at the possibility it was from his brother’s blood.

Maybe it wasn’t, but these clouds and the humid air didn’t feel like the awful-wrong- _skyborn_ storm that had dashed Hop from the water to the rocks only days ago. That happened because Raihan had willed it.

These clouds, this drizzle Hop could taste in the air…that wasn’t the dragon’s doing. But, the One Who Sleeps Below had not sent storms so wide-ranging even for his brother in many years.

Leon was careful to keep enemies away or win his battles confidently.

Hop hoped nothing bad, truly bad had happened. That it wasn’t because of—

“So, Hop—are you doing that?”

Raihan’s voice. Hop stared dumbly, blinking away and back to the present where the dragon stared at him. Reluctantly pulled away from thoughts of Leon, pained to do so.

The question was so non-sequitur Hop didn’t register quite what had been asked.

Hop had to timidly hesitate before asking himself, “Uhm…w-what?”

Raihan’s eyes hardened a bit. Hop didn’t look away but shrank in on himself further into the man’s chest, afraid. But the dragon didn’t yell, to Hop’s relief.

“I asked, are you the one making it storm out here?”

Hop blinked.

“What?” he asked softly before he could stop himself, incredulous. Then he caught himself, saw the impatience in the dragon’s eyes; before the stranger could get upset again at being asked to repeat himself again Hop hurriedly corrected his mistake, stuttering out, “N-No. I’m. No?”

Why in eternity would the dragon think _Hop_ was causing any kind of rain or storm—let alone one this massive—when Hop was this far inland? He wasn’t bleeding, not externally. He’d swallowed all his blood when his throat was sore; Hop wasn’t near any seawater that he’d seen or he’d have felt it. He knew he would have. Hop had about as much ability to make it storm here as the boulder Raihan sat on holding him.

Raihan frowned. “You don’t sound very sure of that.”

“I…” Hop tried to think of how to say it. Cringing, with his hands fisted uncomfortably in the glossy material of the garb that Raihan wore. Not wanting to offend him, not wanting to be yelled at.

“Not that part,” Hop said shakily, staring up at him and pleading for the dragon to believe him without words. “I just, wasn’t sure why…why y-you…thought that?”

Raihan stared at him.

“Sealfolk are stormbringers,” the dragon said flatly, sounding—not _irritated_ , but impatient, nearly as bad. Hop couldn’t help a few more tears falling, hating the fear, hating even this unwanted stranger that had Hop ensnared being angry with him. “Anyone that knows folk can tell that much. I’ll admit, I figured it probably wasn’t a weakling like you…but at least it’d make things more interesting.”

Hop stared up at him, coughing several times before he could manage to say anything back. Still so confused, head swimming with fever.

“But that was days ago.”

Raihan stared back at him, now looking equally confused. “What? What was?”

“The…water?” Hop managed to get out, tears forming unbidden at the memory that was still so raw and painful, more than the just-healed scraping in his throat. “Since I was. I didn’t—I thought you m-made the storms then. And then I…”

Hop sobbed. “And then I was _here._ And…”

The dragon hummed, a sound that indicated he wasn’t angry, if also not quite satisfied. Raihan wrapped his arms around Hop’s lower back so the boy could press his cheek against his chest to cry, starved for the contact without quite realizing it in a way that Raihan had picked up on well by now.

“You can only create storms when you’re at the ocean?” Raihan murmured, stroking through Hop’s hair, and Hop made a small whine of appreciation unwittingly before he could answer with a full-body shiver.

“I…wh. Create…?” Hop was confused, struggling not to cough again so he could think.

Raihan made it sound like he or Leon controlled the sea and skies when the weather cried for them. If the blood of their kind was spilt within the water.

In simplest terms, Hop supposed it could be said that way. He supposed Raihan was too proud to see a difference.

Hop sighed shakily and answered, “R-Right, has to be. In the water.”

He hiccuped a sob. Clenched his small clawed hands in the stranger’s clothes again. “I don’t _know_ if it’s a storm for us but. One this big then it rained two days if it was, it must be Lee.” Hop was mumbling, hardly making sense, and he bit down on his lip to stifle more sobs. Hardly noting the stranger’s posture shift under him, body perked with interest.

“That’s the one you called for,” Raihan murmured, rubbing Hop’s shoulders. He didn’t seem to mind even as Hop cried harder at the memory. “On the beach, yeah? I remember you were screaming name, right? Lee, Lee, Lee.”

Hop said nothing, only sobbed, his body wracked with it while Raihan petted him, seeming pleased in a way that should have made Hop feel relieved but didn’t.

“So this Lee. I’m guessing that whoever they are, they’re another sealfolk. Like you.”

Hop hiccupped, glancing up again with some effort, coughing, tears and snot making a mess of his face. Raihan at least considerately wiped them away, looking more focused than fond, but not unkind.

Where Hop couldn’t normally take his eyes off the dragon for fear, this time he couldn’t help but lower his head a bit, looking away.

“N-Not like me,” Hop murmured, dropping his eyes. Uncomfortable, at being compared to his older brother. The one who had always protected him, where Hop was small and stupid and scrawny and had gotten himself—

He stopped thinking. He kept talking.

“S-Stronger. Bigger.”

Raihan hummed appreciatively, sounding…anticipatory. Hop didn’t know why but he was scared, still scared.

“So. Lee is the one that makes these storms that cover the island like this,” Raihan said. His voice was sharp and focused enough to catch Hop’s attention, predatory in a way that made the young sealfolk afraid. But there was a dreamlike quality in the dragon’s voice as well, as he went on with his clawed hand stilling at the small of Hop’s back, as though forgetting momentarily the boy was even there.

“Powerful, magnificent storms,” Raihan muttered to himself, gaze fixed somewhere far off as if into the distant horizon not visible to them beyond the trees. “Storms even the the landfolk and humans can see, for kilometers stretching out beyond the shore. All the sea in a fury…all that _power!_ ”

He glanced back down at Hop with wild eyes, pupils narrowed far more than usual in eyes that nearly seemed to glow. “That’s your Lee, then?”

Hop trembled again through his tears to stare up at Raihan’s face. Hop was pale. Scared and uncertain.

There was that phrasing again. ‘Making’ storms. Like…like it was something Leon _did_ , instead of something that happened _for_ Leon.

Like he would bleed to enrage the seas on purpose—bleed or get hurt or do anything that’d leave Hop all alone.

The way Hop had left _him_.

“He…his…yeah. Yes?” Hop finally managed, in a cracked, pitiful voice pitched high near the end with longing and misery.

It was true, in the barest sense. Leon’s blood was the one that could make the skies and seas act that way. It was terrifying to think of him being hurt.

Because if he was, then…Hop sobbed, unable to stop even with Raihan staring at him with that smile, that look.

If Leon was hurt it would be because he was looking for Hop. Hop’s lip wobbled.

Raihan was apparently very pleased with this answer, though. Enough to let out a soft breath of laughter that lacked its usual cruelty and appreciatively pet Hop's skin, his hair.

“Good. Good,” he muttered, and the tone he used, pleased and distracted, coaxed Hop to relax a little in the stranger’s lap despite himself. The slightest bit less afraid.

But then the dragon turned a critical eye on him again and Hop felt like he was being preyed upon once more, even though Raihan’s expression wasn’t necessarily expectant, or upset—not toward Hop, at least. Or it didn’t feel that way.

That was a thought that should have been comforting, but wasn’t. And Hop didn’t know why.

And then a moment later, he did.

Because Raihan asked, glancing down at him fondly,

“And if I guessed correctly…” Raihan all but purred, and Hop shivered, glassy-eyed at the tone, “this Lee probably misses you a lot by now. Doesn’t he?”

Hop could feel the trap in the air between them. He could, but he didn’t know what it was, not enough to know what answer was best to say even if he could have lied.

He was so scared out of his wits without his pelt, without Leon. Hop knew even Victor wouldn’t have recognized him now, for the sealfolk friend he knew from just a couple of days ago as the same lad that felt himself slowly nodding, unbidden, to the dragon in response. As if the motion were being pulled out of him by invisible strings.

Raihan smiled, leering, but there was fondness there too that made Hop crumple weakly into his touch. The man was pleased and pet Hop’s hair, skimming hands gently over the soft skin of his back again.

It didn’t hurt. Hop all but closed his eyes and didn’t think not to lose himself in the touch, after days without Leon’s hands on him—

Except then an absently high brush of Raihan’s fingers caused Hop to squirm uncomfortably in his lap, breath hitched. Not liking how those hands inched too close to the scars that formed Leon’s mark on him when he touched too far high on him, every time Raihan’s fingers drew too close to the sigils on Hop’s front or back.

Raihan noticed this, paused.

“What are these, anyway” the dragon asked, pulling Hop away from his own mind.

Hop opened his eyes, not having realized his movements caught the dragon’s attention. Hop opened his mouth to ask what Raihan was talking about. Before he could, Raihan’s hand was pulling around to Hop’s front and reaching for his torso, gently touched against the skin there and skimming up to—

_**wrong. no wrong wrong stop primordial no can’t he wasn’t lee get off. wrong no stop it, make it stop or else  
** _

Hop let out an awful, tearing noise that could have been a scream, if he were fully healed in his throat, springing to life for the first time in nearly two days and was gone, unaware of the way Raihan startled with his entire body below where Hop was straddled on his lap.

Hop’s pupils were dilated, feral, desperate. He pulled back from the invasive touch where he sat as fast as he could, small hands tearing for Raihan’s flesh searching to get those hands away from him with his claws. Eyes wide, unseeing and the tears spilled unbidden but also with something deeper than just fear; trying desperately to remove the unfamiliar spread of someone else’s **_someone not his didn’t belong there_**

palm, pressed directly against the mating mark on his sternum. Something was holding him in place even with the touch gone but it might come back and Hop opened his mouth to try and scream again, the noise coming out as a terrified snarl behind bared teeth—

A talon-curved hand slapped him hard across the face and Hop returned to himself, shocked back to his senses.

He coughed, disoriented. He was breathing heavily and his eyes refocused, confused to snap upward at Raihan, who had one hand wrapped firmly around Hop’s back to keep him in place. The dragon man’s expression looked nearly as shocked as Hop felt.

The latter felt himself sinking into dead trembling of horror again, not from being stared at, not from Raihan hitting him. Even now the remainder of that awful, unwanted sensation wormed through his skin from the mark, spreading outward. Hop felt violated, betrayed, unclean. He sobbed again through full-body quaking, at the feeling.

“Wh-Wh— _Whyyy_ —” Hop cried and the sound keened upward into a whine. Through tears he met Raihan’s ice blue eyes with his own, a look of utmost betrayal marring Hop’s features unbidden as his face screwed up with hurt.

“Why did you, wh-why did you do that, you, you—ahhhnn, h-h-” Hop sobbed. His body wouldn’t stop shaking as he lifted his own arms to wrap around himself, curling in on his own bodyas tightly as he could. Desperate to protect that piece of Leon from being touched by someone else again. His voice was raw and coughing, spluttering, and everything hurt.

“Whyy…? It’s nnnot…y-you. Didn’t _make_ it, it’s not…it’s…”

He trailed off into gasping sobs, feeling choked for air, wheezing. He couldn’t see for tears.

A hand tilted his chin up, and Hop swallowed painfully and found himself compelled to look into the dragon’s electric-blue eyes.

And Hop froze, remembered where he was. And with whom.

“I _usually_ like prey to put up a fight,” Raihan said softly, enough that Hop went wide-eyed and bit down on his lip to keep in a sob and then a fit of coughing not to anger him. “But I don’t want to have to kill you if I can help it, silkie.”

Hop shook, still held firmly in place by the dragon’s hands on his back and face. His neck began to ache from the strain of looking so far up at him; the least of the seal lad’s worries.

“You don’t do that again, now. Understand?” Raihan said, his voice coming out on the end as nearly a hiss of anger.

Hop, wide-eyed, let tears fall freely and tried to nod. It wasn’t easy the man’s clawed hand still holding his head to face upward, and in his terror Hop was unconsciously leaning into Raihan’s palm, not realizing as he did.

He missed the way Raihan sat back a little and released him after, looking put-off but satisfied when Hop grew confused for a moment with his head trying just a second to follow the touch before he sank back into himself on the dragon’s lap, coughing.

“Huh…so, tell me what that was about?”

Hop wanted to squirm away from that gaze, fixed squarely on him. But he couldn’t.

“H-Hurts…” he whimpered. It didn’t _physically_ hurt, exactly, to have that place touched, where the marks were left. But it was worse. Even now Hop swore he could feel it everywhere when he thought of it, inside and out and it was awful—he couldn’t think of a better word than pain to describe the feeling.

“That mark?”

Hop nodded. Tears spilled down his face and he still shaking no matter how many times he tried to blink the tears back.

Raihan considered, gaze appraising. “Why?”

Hop had to close his eyes, then, frightened of the response before he answered:

“Not…it…w-wasn’t. Yours,” he whimpered, eyes screwing shut in anticipation of being hit again. Knowing enough of his situation to guess, that the dragon wouldn’t want to hear the words—he’d told Hop already more than once that he _belonged_ to Raihan, even if the marks didn’t, even if Hop couldn’t change that.

Not even if he’d have ever agreed in a thousand sun cycles to do it. To give up his connection to his older brother. Leon was everything, no matter how much it hurt now being stranded here without him. It was as bad almost, as being without his pelt.

Raihan stiffened, predictably. Hop blurted out with his gold eyes shooting back open, frantic:

“I mean you—you didn’t _make_ it!” he gasped out, desperate. He shrank back a little from Raihan and cringed again, scared, sobbing. “That’s…s’why…”

Raihan frowned. He let Hop cry for a moment, neither trying to comfort him or make him silent.

“Who made it?” Raihan asked, and again memory cut through Hop painfully inside at being forced to think of what he’d lost.

It hurt. It hurt.

Hop swallowed, forced himself to say it.

“L-Lee,” he whispered, the name sending a lance of pain through him again, face screwing up again in anguish. “Lee, Lee…Lee- _eee_ …”

Raihan hummed an assent, not seeming to mind Hop keeing in pain and on the brink of breaking down in sobs again, shaking violently.

“Ah, right,” the dragon in man’s form said, simply. “Stay with me, kid. Who is this Lee, then? What are they to you?”

“Big brother,” Hop sobbed out through gritted teeth, trying to hold in sobs that shook his entire frame as he had to face the memory of what was missing. “Leon. Lee.”

Hop missed Leon so much it ached. Everywhere Hop _wanted_ him. Leon had always been there, always come when Hop needed him, even if he could be pushy or controlling sometimes, lots of times, Hop wouldn’t trade him for anyone.

He’d been Leon’s so long that Hop couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to try and go on without him.

Hop had never remembered Leon being gone so long—away from him, but. No. It wasn’t Lee that left. Hop cried. He was the one that had gone.

This was his fault and now, his brother might be hurt, or worse. Hop hadn’t listened. He’d let his brother down. Hop had never wanted to hurt him, and the realization that he must have, being caught like this and stranded here made him begin to cry so hard he just couldn’t stop even when he couldn’t breathe for coughing.

Crying wildly, Hop was helpless to let Raihan tuck him close to his chest. The dragon curiously making soothing sounds and rubbed Hop’s arms and sides until the seal lad could catch his breath again.

“Tell me what the marks are for,” Raihan said, not asking. Not a question, but a demand.

Hop couldn’t help but feel himself flush at having to say it, body going still in this stranger’s hold.

Raihan pressed him, though. “What do they mean? That you’re Leon’s little brother? Somehow, I don’t think that’s what it’s for, but I don’t know half the silly traditions you folk types like to keep. I want to know what made you so crazy earlier.”

Hop felt paralyzed, unable to speak. His face was flushed, eyes glassy, darting to stare down at his hands in his lap on Raihan’s thighs.

He couldn’t avoid making eye contact any longer when the dragon pulled him back away by the hair to stare Hop down, eliciting an uncomfortable whine.

“Time to answer. What are they for?”

Hop sucked in a breath, his voice so soft he was certain Raihan wouldn’t be able to hear it. Tears ran down again and he made himself say the word through clenched teeth, even though his face was hot with embarrassment without really knowing why.

“Mate,” he forced out. “M-Ma. Mating.”

Raihan’s grip went suddenly so tight where he had a hold of Hop’s hair the boy yelped in fear and pain, yanked by the neck even as Raihan leaned in.

“ _What_ ,” Raihan said sharply, and Hop stiffened in his hold again on instinct out of fear.

Hop shook in place with glassy eyes, unable to speak. When he tried, swallowing against the pain in his throat, the next breath of air he managed to suck in only expelled itself in shaky, coughing gasps, no matter how he tried to control it. He still was staring down at his own hands, the points of his own claws digging into the skin of his palms. He felt too hot, red-faced, tears falling freely and thinking of Lee.

“Mate. You said mating,” Raihan said accusingly.

Hop closed his eyes and nodded quickly, cringing as the dragon’s grip went tighter still. “Uh-huh,” Hop whimpered out.

“You told me Leon was your brother!”

“He,” Hop whimpered, trying to tug away even the slightest bit to no avail in confusion and fear, “ _is_.”

“And he gave you those scars? On both sides?” Raihan all but snarled. “Are they marks to attract someone? Do you put them on a…you called it mate, right? The marks are meant for—”

“B-Both,” Hop sobbed, finally looking up at Raihan, tears streaming down his face, wishing he could beg him to stop without getting slapped again.

“He’s _both_ , both. M-My brother, and mate, I… _p-please_ , that hurts!”

Raihan startled below him, seeming to realize how tightly he was gripping so that Hop’s joints creaked in his arm and neck. From the places that the dragon been gripping so tightly with his talons along his small body. 

Finally, mercifully, Raihan loosened his hold.

Hop waited with wide, fearful eyes, biting down on his coughs, still crying. 

Instead of yelling, the dragon-in-man’s form soothed Hop with a sound, stroked his hair a moment in apology. He wrapped his arms around the sealfolk lad again.

“Sorry, silkie,” Raihan hushed, and Hop went boneless, letting the dragon pull him close with shivery relief. For some reason the dragon leaned down to brush his lips against Hop’s forehead, making him sniffle and blink in confusion against the other’s chest, but he was still to glad for not being yelled at to ask.

“I guess I got carried away trying to understand. But I think I get it now.”

He didn’t, Hop thought, miserably, even burrowing closer to the other and closing his eyes, trying to ward off the chill that wracked his body. Raihan _didn’t_ , didn’t understand, or he’d let Hop leave, he’d give his pelt back.

He’d let him go home to Leon. Hop needed Leon.

But Hop didn’t say that. He was too tired to deal with more yelling and hitting, now; to do more even than curl into the dragon’s chest again shivering with fever. Hop tried to breathe between coughs, and eventually his crying slowed.

Hop knew that wasn’t going to happen, though. He let his body go lax, coughing occasionally as Raihan continued to pet his hair and skin. Eventually the dragon stood back up with the seal lad cradled close and walked back to the place he’d called his castle, carrying them both back into the dwelling where the dragon lived.

It wasn’t home, but Hop was too tired to protest when Raihan whispered reassuringly that’s where he was taking them.

Hop was asleep long before Raihan reached his room to lay them down in bed, the sealfolk lad still cradled to him, resting fitfully beneath the dragon’s watchful eye while Raihan sat in the silence of his thoughts.

And then plans, turning in motion…


	7. pillow talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pleasure before business, is what Misty likes to say.
> 
> Her bedmate kind of wishes they could do both.

Misty woke, pleased by the satisfying ache between her legs and the sunshine dabbling through the cracks in the wooden log hut. Seemed she hadn’t been out for long; the day was the same, minus the dreary rain.

Not that she minded water. But if she was going to be on land, she wanted to enjoy it the way the landwalkers did.

She sat up and yawned, stretching. One hand brushed over her head out of habit to make sure her hat was still in place, though the pale legs that had replaced the tailfin making up her lower body were proof enough that she hadn’t misplaced her treasured possession.

She stood from the cozy cot on the floor, untangling herself from the boy who’d dozed off too with his arms wrapped loosely around her torso. She was contemplating the clothes he’d brought, settling on a dark two-piece garment humans used for swimming when she heard him stir.

“Mmnn…” the boy yawned, rubbing his eyes before looking around the small hut near the beach, one of several that still stood despite not being inhabited regularly by any of the island’s human residents. He blinked, seemingly surprised to see Misty still there, and she flashed a smile his way and a wink as she pulled the bikini bottoms with some difficulty over her legs, sighing when the digging of something into her front reminded her of the rule to inform her when she had the damn things on backward—clothes never seemed to make sense no matter how often she tried to wear them normally.

“Um,” the boy offered, face a bit red when Misty glanced at him, already pulling the garments off again and leaving her legs and bare sex exposed. “Y-You have…had those on—”

“Yeah, yeah. Backward,” Misty sighed. “You humans have no policy at all when it comes to covering yourselves sensibly. Will you give me a hand here, Red?”

The boy stiffened, then sighed, standing. He grabbed his own boxers and pulled them over his legs, making Misty pout, before meandering over to her and helping her get one leg through the right hole in the bikini bottoms, then the other. She tugged them up herself, but let her companion handle the top part of the garment, liking the feeling of being pampered as much as she hated admitting that she couldn’t fasten the top of the bathing suit on her own to save her life.

She glanced at him when he finished snapping the hooks in the back and tied the loose fabric strings to cover it with a bow, and at his nod she grinned, twirling. “Ta-da!” she proclaimed, kissing him on the cheek and making him blush faintly again. “Thanks, Red. How do I look?”

He glanced away, a hand going to the nape of his neck instead of answering immediately, and Misty paused. Was he implying she wasn’t beautiful? The most beautiful? Did it have something to do with that girl who’d brought the clothes for him to loan her again, whatever her name was? Misty didn’t think she was _that_ attractive, hardly at all, even! Certainly not compared to—

“You’re beautiful, Misty,” the boy mumbled, snapping the mermaid queen out of her tempestuous thoughts. He sighed, meeting her eyes with melancholy blue ones. “But, you don’t…actually need me to tell you that, right?”

Misty blinked at him, confused. “What’s wrong? You seem pretty upset.”

“What do you care?” he asked dully, going for his own clothes, undergarments slipping on first. Misty scowled.

“What do you mean? I’m allowed to care about you if I want!”

“Not enough to tell me what it is you do when you come up here,” Calem said without looking back at her. His voice wasn’t the least bit angry or resentful, just…tired. Melancholy, even.

“I know you don’t come to the Isle just to see me. You just…come in out of nowhere, pretend you don’t know my name, so you can live out some fantasy with another guy maybe you knew, once. Then you sneak out when I’m asleep or laugh me off when I ask if you need any help,” he murmured, hands shaking ever-so-slightly as he pulled on his blue jacket and matching sleek bottoms without mind for the heat.

“What am I supposed to assume you really think of me?” he continued, voice determinedly composed as he picked up his strewn-about clothes and continued dressing. “When you insist on acting like a bubble-headed idiot when I’m here instead of…I don’t know. Maybe letting me help you? Instead of just getting what you want and running off to do what you actually came to shore to take care of. I know, I know, it’s _stupid_ to complain, any other guy and Serena would kill to have just this much with the queen of the godsdamned mermaids, but…we’ve been doing this for years…I just…”

Calem sighed again, pulling his red hat down over his eyes. “I just wish—”

He was interrupted by a slender body wrapping around his own. Misty reached around him and wrapped her arms around the taller boy’s front, her face resting on his back affectionately.

“I don’t mean to make you feel bad,” she said softly. “You reminded me of someone, but I figured you knew this couldn’t really be more than what it is.”

Calem swallowed. “If you wanted, I—” Was he stupid? he had to wonder fleetingly. Did he hate himself, or was he just some kind of masochist? “—I could help you find him. If you met him here, there’s a good chance he’d still be around.”

Misty smiled sadly, expression softening. Her sweet Calem.

“Don’t worry about that, sweetie,” she said. She wrung out her still-damp red hair and pulled it up into a ponytail, taking a few tries with the scrunchie Calem’s girl friend had left with the other clothes instead of the kelp that usually kept Misty’s hair in place beneath the waves. “I don’t want you hanging around with me when I’m on the island for your own protection.”

“You don’t even know half the places here as well as I do,” Calem argued. “I could at least point you in the right direction or help you not get lost. I—I worry about you.” He fidgeted, blushing. “Even if you’re folk, and have your magic or whatever, and I’m just a human…”

Misty gave him a sidelong glance, then stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. She tweaked the hat on his head with a thoughtful look, Calem glancing at her confused all the while.

“You’re not as human as you think,” Misty told him seriously, then smiled again.

“Tell you what,” she said, appraisingly as she glanced him over, fully clothed, for once not judging by appearance but seeking something else. “There is a human that I’m looking for while I’m here, and I didn’t come all the way out here in that nasty storm just to go home without any answers. It’s not the end of the world if I can’t find him, but if you can help me figure out where he is, he might be able to tell me some things about a couple of sealfolk that are making a bit of a ruckus at our colony as of late.”

Calem blinked at her, completely taken aback by the first words she said. She didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t press, though he rather wanted to.

Instead he listened patiently to the rest, nodding as he turned the words over in his head, despite not knowing what sealfolk were. Calem didn’t know all the humans on the island, not personally, but if she could narrow down the descriptions and where she’d seen the one she wanted, Calem thought he might be able to take her to at least a few settlements where her quarry made their home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know ur not here to read about these random-ass characters and their sex life but sorry, they ended up being too clean a section to merge with something else
> 
> next section idk if raihop but raihan for sure, w/probably gloria. hopefully hop at least at the end.
> 
> other characters are still around / alive probably. timeline has only been about two and a half days since the story started


	8. that’s the high

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raihan visits Gloria to inform her he’s totally, absolutely moving on. Unless maybe she wants to change her mind??
> 
> No? Really? 
> 
> Well…okay, fine. Raihan has someone else in mind.

Raihan’s thoughts were troubled as he left the castle later in the afternoon. Alone as he was wont to travel, though the possessive part of him reared up inside his belly in affront, at the idea of leaving his silkie behind when he should be with Raihan always.

The rational side of Raihan was stronger in his human-shape form. He decided it best to let the pup remain sleeping as he was for the time being: tucked securely in Raihan’s bed to sweat out the inexplicable fever that had only grown worse as the they day grew long, half-delirious when he woke up among the layers of cushioned and silk blankets.

The seal lad still hacked and coughed in his sleep and on waking, wracked with chills and fever. When he woke, he could only talk for scant moments, answer one or two of Raihan’s questions before blubbering tears spilled forth and left the pup an incoherent mess that couldn’t control himself and hardly seemed to know who or where he was. But Raihan had heard enough, enough that he knew he needed to consult with the only other person—well, folk—on the Isle of Eternity with knowledge enough of Sealfolk.

But that would have to wait. The first errand was more important, and it didn’t require him bringing Hop along when he was in such a state.

Raihan had considered any potential dangers of leaving the pup in his home unsupervised, few as they were. The dragon wasn’t about to take any chances, not with his silkie’s freedom (or lack thereof), even in the form of a death of his soon-to-be-wife that might have been prevented.

Before leaving, Raihan spent a half hour or so heading further down into the bowels of the castle that housed the Vault. He’d picked out a servile salamander from the flames in the maw of the titular mechanism of the boiler room beneath his domicile. Finally, with it settled near Hop on the bed, Raihan left after instructing the orange-scaled creature to watch over his selkie and not let Hop grow too ill from fever or chill. Then and only then did Raihan finally leave. The dragon-in-man’s-form walked alone through the trampled path out of the thicket that lead down to the base of the hills: Raihan was headed to the human settlement on the other side, an agricultural commune named Turffield for the harvest spirits that guarded it as their domain.

Hop might have been in no condition to travel. But even without him, Raihan had a few errands that needed attending to in preparation for the coming days ahead. The first such stop didn’t require the seal lad’s presence, though privately, Raihan had hoped to bring him.

Just in case his physical presence might make a difference. If, say, he were noted with any degree of, say, jealousy, upon seeing…

…ah. There.

There she was.

Raihan had been lost in thought as he approached the outer limits of the the settlement---so it was a pleasant surprise that swept through him and radiated throughout his entire being, when he suddenly laid eyes on _her._

The woman of his loveliest dreams and fantasies. The prodigious cunningwoman, in the tiny packaged form of a child, body and mind. The brunette he adored for every centimeter she stood petite and deadly and radiant.

The girl called Gloria—and truly, would wonders never cease!—of the _human_ species.

Raihan melted, forgetting the lessons he’d learned the hard way last time. And the time before.

And maybe the seven or eight times before that, but fuck it. Raihan was a romantic.

“Hey! Gloria!”

From her position sitting on the fence, licking a fruit popsicle in the afternoon sun, the girl stiffened. She turned in his direction with wide brown eyes.

Upon seeing Raihan approaching fast on indecently long legs the girl’s expression flattened. Under her breath, se muttered something that Raihan purposefully elected not to listen in on with his heightened senses but from her lip movements seemed to be along the lines of _Ughhh, go away_.

“Come on, I’m sure there must be something I can do to prove myself worthy of your love,” Raihan teased, sidling up alongside the fence even as the girl gave him a cold look and frantically scooted away to put some distance between them.

“I’m not interested,” she said stiffly, watching the dragon back with rapt, hard eyes. Like a true predator, Raihan thought, heart pounding despite himself—what he’d come here to do.

“Well, this may be your last chance,” he said, a hint of teasing but also seriousness in the words, as he wagged a finger close enough to her face that the girl winced and pulled back again. “The great Raihan isn’t going to be an eligible bachelor for much longer. So if you want to reconsider, I’m still more than willing to take you on once and for all—as the precious, powerfully gifted little wife of my hopes and dreams!”

Gloria stared at him with narrowed, focused brown eyes searching him for something.

“Not interested,” she repeated softly.

Raihan let out an overdramatic—if partly genuine—lovelorn sigh of absolute sadness.

“Then I suppose I shall just have to carry on with my plans for my sweet new bride, little Gloria. But I’ll never forget the future that you and I—”

Even as he waxed poetic, Raihan was too busy watching her left hand at her hip—where she’d caught him off-guard last time, throwing a handful of some awful folk dust that burned him to his core and left him writhing on the filthy barnyard earth and let Gloria make her escape.

Raihan’s focus was what gave her the new opening this time. Before he could finish his dramatics, or register even that Gloria’s other hand holding the ice treat was moving, she’d swung around shoved the fruit ice (gripped in her whole palm, instead of by the little wooden stick) hard directly onto the skin of his throat over vein of his jugular.

Raihan screamed in pain. Clumsily falling backward, in a heap as he felt his blood from the spot spread out like ice shards from the spot of contact through his body like cold shrapnel beneath his skin. He writhed writhing on the ground for a long moment until he could catch his breath, the sounds coming out in raw whimpers.

Somehow, through the pain, that voice he so loved cut through to his consciousness:

“My brother’s laid up with pneumonia! It’s bloody hot out here—we’ve got vegetables to gather up by sunset, and the _one_ time I try an’ take a break, you won’t leave me alone!” Gloria shouted angrily, pausing-mid-run once Raihan had shakily gotten himself propped up onto his hands to see her retreated on shaking legs to the center of the fenced-in berry field she’d been tending before he arrived.

“I’m ten!” Gloria yelled, tears pricking the corners of her eyes and stamping her feet in frustration. “Go away, and marry your new… _whoever_ , scale-face! I hate you, and I just want you to leave me alone for once, okay?!”

She reached into the fanny pack where she kept the fair folk dust, and Raihan quickly scrambled to his feet, disappointed but not stupid enough to risk _that_ on top of the bright blistering ice scar he already could feel forming across the length of his throat.

“…And…And tell ’em I’m sorry they have to be married to _you!_ ” she finished angrily, lowering her hands shakily from her dust pack once she saw Raihan wasn’t coming after her.

And with that, Gloria spun on her heel and ran again, no doubt looking for safety in Milo’s shadow; or some other dull-witted garden fairy she thought could stand between Raihan and what he wanted.

Well. Fortunately for _her_ , Raihan wanted Gloria for her exact same passion, and her heart. If he couldn't have those, at least he could still be her mortal enemy, he consoled himself with a mournful sigh.

He’d expected the final rejection, yes, but it still stung.

But. Raihan thought of what was waiting for him at home, and couldn’t help but smile. Remembering the other reason he had come here besides one last declaration of doomed love.

He didn’t need Gloria to be his wife and partner. Especially not now.

Raihan did need something else, though. Which saw the dragon flying down several minutes later through the window of Gloria’s room to go snooping through her chest of drawers, once he was certain she’d not retreated to the tiny cottage she shared with Victor and her mother.

It was a quick search to find what he was looking for, at least, something that matched the image in his mind. Raihan beamed, one ear mindful of the other twin’s coughing from the next room over. The dragon found his prize once he rifled through a third set of drawers, and it was perfect. He’d pulled out exactly the type and color of garment he’d been looking for. 

Sure, it was cotton fabric and plain. Without much by way of adornments. Doubtless it’d be shorter-fitting than intended, if simultaneously too large ; given that Raihan’s selkie had longer legs and a skinnier frame compared to Gloria herself.

Especially now that the poor, confused seal pup had been so ill the last couple of days.

Even so, already Raihan’s slitted-pupil eyes were glazing over at thoughts of what his pretty, soft sealfolk boy would look like wearing it once everything else was ready.

How the boy would look, better still, while Raihan was peeling it slowly off him.

Raihan had no way of knowing he’d found a simple nightdress, nothing more. Certainly nothing fit for a ceremony or even proper clothes to wear outdoors.

As far as the dragon was concerned, it was white, and it was a dress. And that was what mattered for a wedding gown.

Raihan retreated from Gloria’s room out the window again and made way for home again, allowing himself to shift to his true form in his pleasure and eagerness to make it back more quickly.

They had one other visit to make, before starting any kind of ceremonial tripe that folk and humans loved to celebrate these occasions with, but Raihan was looking forward to it.

And Raihan had a feeling that the second surprise he had for his little seal pup would go over far better—at least , if the person he had in mind could shove it with the attitude for once and give Raihan the straight answers that he needed, and especially not make Raihan’s young new partner upset with that infamously merciless demeanor.

Raihan had a feeling it wouldn’t be a problem. Bringing Hop to the one he had in mind…

He hissed out a laugh midair, twirling languidly through the currents on the breeze.

Well, that’d make the pair of them two of a kind, after all.

What more could someone in in so hopeless a position ask for?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes leon’s invited to the wedding wherever the fuck he ended up. raihan’ll figure it out he’s kind of winging this 
> 
> oh and he should probably tell…hop…poor baby

**Author's Note:**

> @psychic_surge and…tentatively active on twitter, if you want to follow??


End file.
